Tea Tsulukiani, a senior figure from Georgia’s ruling party, has won a lawsuit at the Supreme Court against TV host and opposition figure Nanuka Zhorzholiani, who had claimed Tsulukiani’s father, who served as a judge, sentenced 20 people to death during the Soviet era.
Tsulukiani filed a defamation complaint against Zhorzholiani in July 2025, after the TV host claimed on Facebook that the MP’s father, Avtandil Tsulukiani, had ‘shot’ the people listed by Zhorzholiani.
Tsulukiani also requested that another phrase the journalist had used be declared defamatory: ‘It was a transitional time when the death penalty was abolished and Judge Tsulukiani could use another higher sentence’.
Zhorzholiani posted a video on social media on Tuesday, where she explains how the ‘beef’ between her and Tsulukiani escalated. She added that the lawsuit ended in Georgia; all eight judges working on this case fulfilled all of Tsulukiani’s requests. Zhorzoliani said she intended to appeal the decision of the Supreme Court to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg.
Zhorzholiani’s defence team argued that she had obtained the information from public sources, and that her post fell within the scope of freedom of expression.
When announcing that she was suing Zhorzholiani for defamation in July 2025, Tsulukiani said on Facebook that she would not publish the list the TV host shared, ‘because, in all likelihood, many of these individuals were previously convicted of particularly heinous crimes — including premeditated murder, the dismemberment and disposal of bodies in the trash, and so forth’.
She also said that 15 people on the list were ‘still alive today’.
‘One passed away after my father had already departed this life; others died after Georgia abolished the death penalty; and one cannot be identified at all — and so on’, she said.
Tsulukiani sued Zhorzholiani shortly after Georgian Dream amended the legislation on defamation in 2025.
That same year, Tsulukiani threatened all critics with legal action over rumours about an alleged second marriage.