On July 16, British citizen Matthew Roy Desmond has reached a plea agreement with the Georgian Prosecutor’s Office.
The agreement was approved by Judge Nino Galustashvili. Desmond was found guilty, fined 100,000 GEL, ordered to be deported from Georgia, and banned from re-entering the country for 20 years.
The war veteran was arrested on Georgian border on April 23, 2026, under the charges of illegally importing “large quantities of narcotic and psychotropic substances” into the country. The defence denied the allegations.
According to his lawyers, Desmond had a doctor’s prescription for all the medications he used as painkillers, and these were the same medicines that Georgian authorities classified as the illegal import of narcotic and psychotropic substances. However, the problem was that the prescriptions had not been translated into Georgian or notarised. They also said that Desmond suffers from a spinal injury. Without the plea agreement, he would have faced between eight and twelve years in prison in Georgia.
After being released from the courtroom, Desmond was transferred into the custody of the immigration authorities, where he will remain until he leaves the country.
