The Public Defender of Georgia responded to the trials of the persons, who were detained during the November 18 rally outside the Parliament. According to her, their trials failed to meet the minimum human rights standards.

“Just one judge was in charge of overseeing the cases of all the 37 detainees, which led to an unreasonable delay in the court proceedings. The hearing of the cases of 17 people has not even begun and 8 are still pending.

Special attention should be paid to the fact that the maximum term of detention - 12 hours - prescribed by law was violated for those detained during the working hours. Nevertheless, the judge did not release them, but left them deprived of their liberty until the hearing was put off.

The court failed to ensure the distribution of cases between different judges in order to ensure timely conduct of the hearings and to prevent deprivation of liberty for an unreasonable term due to the delays.

The 19-20 November court hearings once again reminded the public of the shortcomings in the Soviet-era Administrative Offences Code.

We call on the Prosecutor"s Office to take into account the practice relating to the persons detained on 20-21 June 2019 and the facts that the Administrative Offences Code does not meet the minimum standards of human rights and that significant violations were identified during the trials of persons detained on November 18, and to use the protest mechanism provided for by the Organic Law on the Prosecutor’s Office, appeal to the court and demand the release the detained persons”, - reads the statement.