Georgia upholds Mzia Amaglobeli’s 2-year prison sentence 

New York, November 18, 2025—The Committee to Protect Journalists calls on Georgian authorities to release journalist Mzia Amaglobeli, a prominent media manager, after a Georgian appeals court upheld a decision on November 18 that sentenced her to two years in prison. 

The journalist, who has been widely recognized domestically and internationally as a political prisoner, reportedly plans to challenge the ruling in Georgia’s Supreme Court.

“The rejection of journalist Mzia Amaglobeli’s appeal is another blow for press freedom in Georgia,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator. “We call on Georgian authorities not to contest Amaglobeli’s Supreme Court appeal and to release her immediately.”

Police in the western city of Batumi arrested Amaglobeli on January 12 after a dispute in which the journalist slapped the city’s police chief. In August, a court sentenced her to two years in prison for criminal “resistance, threat, or violence” against an official.

Amaglobeli’s lawyers and rights groups have argued that her pretrial detention and criminal charge were legally unjustified and in reprisal for the work of the award-winning independent news outlets, Batumelebi and Netgazeti, which she founded 25 years ago. Amaglobeli is the first woman journalist to be jailed since Georgia’s independence in 1991.

Amaglobeli’s vision has severely deteriorated in detention and she has faced mistreatment and smear campaigns. In July, tax authorities seized her outlets’ bank accounts.

The European Parliament awarded Amaglobeli the 2025 Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought in October, noting how she and co-awardee Belarusian journalist Andrzej Poczobut had “paid a heavy price for speaking truth to power” and become “symbols of the struggle for freedom and democracy.”

Press freedom has sharply declined in Georgia, as CPJ detailed in a recent submission to the United Nations Human Rights Council. Authorities have enacted a raft of repressive laws against the press amid police impunity for brutal attacks on journalists.

CPJ emailed the press office of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which oversees the police, and the prosecutor’s office for comment but did not immediately receive any replies.