TBILISI -- Eleven people arrested when police dispersed a war veterans protest in Tbilisi were fined today in court for petty hooliganism, RFE/RL's Georgian Service reports.
Lawyer Gela Nikolaishvili told RFE/RL the defendants have 10 days to appeal the 400 lari ($226) fine that each was ordered to pay.
Journalists, NGO representatives, and opposition politicians -- including parliament deputy Dimitri Lortkipanidze -- were barred from entering the courtroom due to "a lack of space."
Meanwhile, several opposition parties and individual politicians have criticized the police action on January 3 against the protesters as inappropriate.
The war veterans began a public protest on Heroes Square on December 27 against the January 1 abolition of social benefits which they had been receiving.
The former soldiers are veterans of the 1992-93 war in the breakaway Georgian region of Abkhazia and the August 2008 war with Russia in South Ossetia, Georgia's other breakaway region.
Read in Georgian here
Lawyer Gela Nikolaishvili told RFE/RL the defendants have 10 days to appeal the 400 lari ($226) fine that each was ordered to pay.
Journalists, NGO representatives, and opposition politicians -- including parliament deputy Dimitri Lortkipanidze -- were barred from entering the courtroom due to "a lack of space."
Meanwhile, several opposition parties and individual politicians have criticized the police action on January 3 against the protesters as inappropriate.
The war veterans began a public protest on Heroes Square on December 27 against the January 1 abolition of social benefits which they had been receiving.
The former soldiers are veterans of the 1992-93 war in the breakaway Georgian region of Abkhazia and the August 2008 war with Russia in South Ossetia, Georgia's other breakaway region.
Read in Georgian here