Man detained in hotel in Kakheti, Georgia facing up to 3 years for punching Russian tourist during wedding bust-up.
A Georgian man, Giorgi Chighladze, was arrested and faces up to three years in prison after hitting a foreign national, a Russian-speaking woman, in her hotel room during a parallel wedding event in the Eastern Georgian region of Kakheti.
The woman’s friends, who posted the video of the physical attack on Instagram, claim that the man attacked the woman for speaking Russian. The man’s lawyer argues that the woman was part of the group that triggered the conflict and was the one to initiate physical confrontation, posting a picture of the man showing him with a bruised neck.
The woman was part of a group staying at Kakheti’s Agarani Estate Hotel, while the man was the groom’s brother at a wedding being held at the same hotel.
“According to the witness testimonies, during a wedding in one of the hotels in Telavi [city in Kakheti], the foreign nationals staying at the hotel offended persons attending the wedding from their hotel room balcony and spilled the water on the equipment, after which the suspect inflicted physical injury on the foreign woman,” the Interior Ministry said in a July 19 statement.