The European Court of Human Rights, in the case of Melia v. Georgia, held that there had been no violation of the right to liberty and security and no violation of the limitation on use of restrictions on rights.

“The case concerned an opposition politician who, at the time of the events, was a member of Parliament and one of the leaders of the United National Movement. He was fitted with an electronic tag in 2019 when released on bail while awaiting trial for his alleged role in organising and participating in an attempted violent storming of the Parliament building on 20-21 June 2019.

Relying on Article 5 (right to liberty and security) and Article 18 (limitation on use of restrictions on rights), Mr Melia alleged that the courts’ decision ordering his pre-trial detention had been unjustified and unnecessary for the purposes of the criminal proceedings against him, and that the only purpose of his pre-trial detention had been to restrict him in his political activities and to punish him for the opposition’s boycott of parliamentary business.

The Court concluded that although the applicant’s detention had been ordered against the backdrop of political tensions in the country, the various points cited by the applicant, taken separately or in combination with each other, did not form a sufficiently homogenous whole to find that the applicant’s detention had gone against the provisions of the Convention.

There had therefore been no violation of Article 18.

The ECHR understood that N. Melia’s conduct may well have been situated within the broader context of the apparently tense political environment in the country at the time, his status as a politician and his right to freedom of expression. However, it appeared that, rather than face any legal consequences for non-compliance with the bail order, N. Melia had expected, given the lapse of a year and a half since the opening of the criminal investigation, that the preventive measures would be annulled altogether.

However, the Court found that such an interpretation of the national law and the Convention was inconsistent with the spirit of the Convention and the principle of the rule of law underlying Article 5 § 1 and found no violation of that Article. The Court considered that no separate issue arose under Article 5 § 3”, - reads the information, released by the European Court of Human Rights.