Gldani prison scandal

On September 18, 2012, several videos were released showing prison guards and their superiors torturing, taunting, and sexually assaulting detainees in Gldani No.

[2] The scandal was unique in Georgian history in that it was initially shared and discussed on social media, before the story began to appear on Georgia's largely pro-government television channels.

[citation needed] In 2004, the pro-Western liberal autocratic United National Movement party of Mikheil Saakashvili came to power in Georgia through the Western-backed Rose Revolution.

In 2006, with the announcement of zero tolerance policy by Mikheil Saakashvili, and the massive surge of prisoner numbers, from 9,688 in 2005 to 21,075 in 2009, the shift of physical ill-treatment was reported from the police to the penitentiary system by 2007.

[8] The video evidence of prison torture was leaked by a former prison officer Vladimir Bedukadze, who fled to Belgium and was briefly wanted in connection with the abuse, but eventually the prosecution decided to relieve him of criminal responsibility as a result of plea bargaining deal on the grounds that Bedukadze helped to uncover "systemic crimes in the Georgian penitentiary".

[1] On October 1, 2012, the governing United National Movement party suffered a landslide defeat to the Georgian Dream Coalition in the parliamentary elections.

[16][17] The ruling party head Bidzina Ivanishvili announced that the plans to ban the United National Movement were set up already in 2012-2013 but could not be implemented because "top Western officials fought tooth and nail to defend the bloody criminals".