Dito [Domenti] Chubinidze, a journalist for the newspaper Asaval-Dasavali, which has been mentioned several times in open letters written by imprisoned former Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili, has been arrested on charges of treason, specifically sabotage. The offence is punishable by up to four years in prison.
According to a statement issued by The Prosecution Service of Georgia, the sabotage charge stems from Chubinidze’s “repeated claims, published through various media outlets’, that part of the David Gareji monastic complex had been transferred to Azerbaijan “under a secret agreement concluded with a neighbouring country.”
The Prosecutor’s Office also said that Chubinidze had repeatedly attempted to “link the death of his interviewee, Lazare Jorbenadze, to a revenge-motivated murder”, alleging that Jorbenadze had been killed after disclosing “incriminating information about Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze”.
“Through these actions, Domenti Chubinidze deliberately engaged in sabotage, to the detriment of the legitimate interests of the Georgian state, thereby obstructing the normal functioning of a state agency and the Government Commission on the Delimitation and Demarcation of the State Border of Georgia,” the statement reads.
Asaval-Dasavali, Chubinidze and Jorbenadze’s death have also featured prominently in claims made by Garibashvili. In his letters from prison, the former prime minister said that a “specific group within Georgian Dream” believed the story about the alleged transfer of the David Gareji monastic complex territory had been commissioned by him. According to Garibashvili, this led the group to blackmail him and pressure him to admit to new corruption charges, supposedly to “eliminate even a 1% chance of his return to politics.”
In his letters, Garibashvili also questioned the circumstances surrounding Jorbenadze’s death, raising broader concerns about what he described as a “the deaths by suicide of several people” Kobakhidze’s premiership.
“The following question must be answered: What was the real cause of the death of human rights defender Lazare Jorbenadze?
I am raising this question publicly because questions surrounding the deaths by suicide of several people that occurred during the rule of the Kobakhidze–Mdinaradze government remain unanswered in the public sphere to this day,” reads the fifth letter sent by the imprisoned former prime minister.
Chubinidze’s interview with Jorbenadze was published in the February 2–8, 2026, issue of Asaval-Dasavali under the headline: “CLASSIFIED — Prime Minister Kobakhidze Signed a Secret Agreement Last Year and Handed Azerbaijan the Part of David Gareji That Saakashvili Had Promised Aliyev.”
On April 4, 2026, Jorbenadze was found dead by hanging. An investigation was launched on suspicion of suicide. Jorbenadze had frequently been interviewed by Asaval-Dasavali and presented himself as a human rights defender, legal expert, activist and clergyman.
According to the Prosecutor’s Office, the investigation established that Jorbenadze’s death was a suicide.
