How Political Are “Political Prisoners” in Georgia? Narratives versus Judgements by the European Court of Human Rights

The label “political prisoner” is one of the most contested signifiers in contemporary Georgian politics. Since the change of government in 2012, opposition parties, loyal TV channels and a range of Western politicians have repeatedly framed high-profile convicts – such as Mikheil Saakashvili, Vano Merabishvili, Gigi Ugulava, Nikanor (Nika) Melia, and Nika Gvaramia – as political prisoners and have called for their release. By contrast, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has adopted a more restrictive approach, using Articles 5, 6, and 18 of the European Convention on Human Rights rather than the political vocabulary used by domestic and international actors. Building on definitional debates around the term “political prisoner” in international law and political science, the article asks: how political are Georgia’s “political prisoners” when assessed through the lens of the Strasbourg jurisprudence and related legal standards? The analysis proceeds in three steps. First, it reconstructs the conceptual field of the term “political prisoner” through Resolution 1900 (2012) of the Council of Europe, the narrower notion of “prisoner of conscience,” and recent attempts to reserve the term for victims of politically biased trials. Second, it examines media and political narratives produced by Georgian opposition channels and Western actors, including European Parliament resolutions, campaigns around Mikheil Saakashvili’s release, and US sanctions against Georgian judges. Third, it juxtaposes these narratives with the ECHR’s handling of five cases (Mikheil Saakashvili, Vano Merabishvili, Gigi Ugulava, Nikanor Melia, and Nika Gvaramia), using Article 18 case-law and the Court’s Guide on Article 18 as benchmarks. The article argues that Georgian “political prisoner” discourse is systematically broader than the legal standards applied by Strasbourg and UN bodies. While some patterns of selective justice and abuse of pre-trial detention are acknowledged (most notably in Merabishvili v. Georgia), subsequent judgments reveal a high evidentiary threshold for improper motives and a strong emphasis on procedural correctness. The resulting gap between narrative and legal assessment does not simply reflect misuse of the term “political prisoner,” it shows how different actors strategically mobilise competing normative frameworks to contest the boundary between legitimate accountability and politicized repression.

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