On March 4, 2026, it was revealed that the Supreme Court of Georgia refused to hear the appeal of the imprisoned journalist Mzia Amaghlobeli, the founder and director of the publications Batumelebi and Netgazeti. The court’s refusal to accept the appeal for consideration, or declaring it inadmissible, means that the court will not review the merits of the case at all and leaves the Court of Appeals’ decision in force. With this step, the judicial review of Mzia Amaghlobeli’s case in Georgia has concluded across all court instances.

Mzia Amaghlobeli was arrested twice during the protest rally in Batumi on the night of January 11-12, 2025. She was initially detained for placing a protest sticker on the wall of an auxiliary storage room at the Batumi Police Department, which read: “Georgia is Striking.” Police officers removed the sticker immediately after it was posted. A few hours after her arrest, Mzia Amaghlobeli was released on her own recognizance, but she was soon arrested again for slapping the head of the Batumi Police, Irakli Dgebuadze. An investigation was launched against the journalist under the first part of Article 353-prime of the Criminal Code. Mzia Amaghlobeli had been placed in pretrial detention as a preventative measure. On August 6, 2025, Judge Nino Sakhelashvili of the Batumi City Court reclassified the charges against Mzia Amaghlobeli under the first part of Article 353 and sentenced her to two years in prison.