Civil.Ge — Tbilisi City Court sent seven persons, arrested in connection to a fistfight in Kavkasia TV, to a two-month pretrial detention pending investigation.
Charges were brought against the seven persons over hooliganism committed in a group through in advance agreement and obstruction to journalists’ work through use of threat, according to the court.
One of these seven persons, Levan Chachua, was among the guests of Kavkasia TV’s talk show when the fistfight erupted outside the TV studio. He is a member of Union of Orthodox Christian Parents.
Nino Jangirashvili, who was a host of the talk show and is an owner of Kavkasia TV, said in an interview with Georgian daily, Rezonansi, on May 10, that Levan Chachua was not taking part in the fistfight. “I want justice and not revenge,” she said and added that although perpetrators should be punished, “charges against them should be well-grounded.”
Police arrested at least eight persons initially, but released one of them later.
Meanwhile, on May 9 an archpriest with close links to a radical Orthodox Christian group, which was involved in series of confrontations that took place last week in Tbilisi, not only in Kavkasia TV but also outside the Ilia State University, was awarded by Patriarch of the Georgian Orthodox Church, Ilia II, on May 9.
After Sunday sermon in Svetitskhoveli Cathedral in Mtskheta, Ilia II announced that he was awarding archpriest Davit Isakadze with decorated pectoral cross and the right to wear the miter for, as he put it, “his service to welfare of our nation and the Church.”
Archpriest Davit Isakadze, who is considered as a spiritual leader of hardline Orthodox group, was among those several clergies, who made their way into the Kavkasia TV studio when the station’s talk show was on air, shortly after the fistfight erupted outside the TV studio. He was accusing Kavkasia TV staff of provoking the incident and saying that the TV station’s several cameramen beaten an activist of Union of Orthodox Christian Parents.
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