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Strasbourg Court Upholds Giorgi Mamaladze's Sentence
The European Court of Human Rights upheld the verdict against Giorgi Mamaladze to be legal and dismissed the claim for moral compensation.
In the ECHR, Giorgi Mamaladze argued that the right to a fair trial was violated due to the circumstances of obtaining the evidence ("sodium cyanide"). He also appealed against the complete closure of the ongoing trial against him and claimed that the presumption of his innocence was violated based on the statements of the General Prosecutor's Office and officials.
The Strasbourg Court did not find a violation of the applicant's right to a fair trial, the circumstances of obtaining evidence ("sodium cyanide") and their reliability. Accordingly, the ECHR did not call into question the findings of the investigative body and the courts at the national level regarding the criminal case against the applicant. It is significant that the Strasbourg Court agreed with the government's position that the evidence obtained by the investigation proved that the "implantation" of a poisonous substance, as claimed by the applicant, was excluded. In addition, the European Court noted that Giorgi Mamaladze's verdict is based on a number of other evidences in the case, such as witness statements, audio and video material, computer data and others.
As for the applicant's other requests, the Court found that the complete closure of the hearings of the case against the applicant was not strictly necessary. In particular, according to the assessment of the European Court, the domestic courts did not adequately justify why part of the hearing could not be held in public. The ECHR considered it a violation of the presumption of innocence to jointly make separate public statements against the applicant and publication of part of the case materials by the Prosecutor's Office, while the obligation of non-disclosure of information was applied to the defense.
It should be noted that the mentioned violations are of a procedural nature and do not affect the validity of the verdict, which was once again confirmed by the decision of the European Court itself today, according to which the criminal proceedings were fair as a whole, the search of the applicant was legal, and there was no case of "implantation" of cyanide.