Irakli Batiashvili, who was released from jail in January after being pardoned by then Acting President Nino Burjanadze, has joined the opposition Republican Party.

Republican Party leader Davit Usupashvili on March 1 welcomed the decision as “good news” for the party. Batiashvili said he would continue the struggle for “a genuinely democratic Georgia” within the Republican Party.

In May 2006 Tbilisi City Court found Batiashvili guilty of providing “intellectual assistance,” essentially providing advice, to a rebel warlord, Emzar Kvitsiani, and sentenced him to seven years’ imprisonment. On September 13 the Court of Appeals upheld the sentence. 

Batiashvili, who at the time of his arrest was a member of an opposition party, Forward Georgia (he then quit the party), served as Georgia’s security chief in the early 1990s. He was arrested on July 29, 2006 – a few days after government forces cracked down on Kvitsiani’s militias in upper Kodori Gorge in breakaway Abkhazia.

Batiashvili denied the charges and claimed they were politically motivated – a view widely shared by other opposition parties and some human rights groups. The Georgian Public Defender’s Office said after studying the case in August that the court verdict against Batiashvili was “unjustified” and was made on the basis of insufficient evidence.

Batiashvili's release was one of four demands made by the opposition coalition during the November protest rallies.