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Politics

Georgia's president pardons 9 from the protest cells

Mikheil Kavelashvili pardoned 9 people jailed across three waves of Georgian protest, from the 2024 marches against the foreign-agents law to last October's unrest, in an act the ruling party framed as answered petitions.

Georgia's president pardons 9 from the protest cells

The list, carried on Friday morning by Netgazeti and item by item by Interpressnews, spans the full protest calendar: three names from 2024, when the foreign-agents law went through; three from the marches that followed the EU-accession freeze; three from the events of 4 October 2025.

One passport stands out. Denis Kulanin, a Russian citizen living in Georgia, was serving 2 years for breaking the windows of a police vehicle at the March 2025 protest by parliament.

a petition, a repentance, a signature

The mechanism was described by the ruling party: Georgian Dream's Archil Gorduladze said the prisoners or their relatives petitioned the president personally and, in the version he gave later in the morning, "repented of the crime".

What Georgian Dream shows the jailed is an individual exit: a petition, a repentance, a signature. The lists of the still-held stay standing; the door opens one name at a time.

By Gorduladze's account, the road out runs through a personal request. Nine were answered on Friday.

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