The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has ruled that Georgia violated the rights of protester Lexo Matchavariani, saying that detention was unlawful in a case that Transparency International Georgia has called strategically significant.
In its May 20 judgment, the Strasbourg Court found a violation of Article 5(1) of the European Convention on Human Rights which protects the right to liberty and security. Matchavariani was detained for 22 hours during a 2020 protest and later fined 1,000 GEL.
As the Court declared, Georgian authorities failed to assess whether his arrest was lawful, necessary, and proportionate. “Merely complying with the 48-hour formal detention limit does not automatically make the detention lawful,” the Court stated. It emphasized that “even when administrative offenses allow for detention and there is a formal legal basis, this does not exempt courts from the obligation to evaluate whether such detention was necessary and proportionate.”
The ECHR also criticized the consistent refusal of Georgian courts to review the legality of administrative detentions. Instead of ruling on these issues directly, domestic courts often instruct detainees to file separate civil lawsuits, a practice the ECHR found ‘essentially unjustified.’
While the Court upheld Matchavariani’s complaint under Article 5, it declared inadmissible his claims under Articles 10 and 11 (freedom of expression and assembly) and rejected the Article 6 complaint concerning the right to a fair trial.
