Amnesty International raised fair trial concerns Friday after the four-year prison sentence handed to 19-year-old protester Saba Jikia in Georgia. Jikia was sentenced for allegedly kicking a police officer who was lying on the ground.

The fair trial concerns arise, in part, from the video evidence used by the prosecution to make their case. According to the defense, the video is unclear whether there was actual contact between the young man in the video, allegedly Jikia, and the police officer, dressed in black but bearing no police number. The argument was that it was impossible to know who the police officer in the video is. Furthermore, according to local live reporting, the defense was not given an opportunity to cross-examine the prosecution’s video expert during the hearing.

At the time of the arrest, Jikia was 18 and thus subject to Georgian juvenile criminal law regulations, which make prison sentences a measure of last resort for individuals 21 years old or younger. However, it is unclear whether these provisions were applied to Saba’s case, raising fair trial concerns.

Protests erupted across Georgia after the November election results gave a majority win to the pro-Russia party, Georgian Dream. Subsequently, the European Union approved a non-binding resolution that rejected the results of the recent election due to procedural irregularities.

The European Parliament has expressed concern about the government’s crackdown against political opponents, and in a widely supported report published Wednesday, Special Rapporteur Rasa Juknevičienė stated the country had turned into a “brutal dictatorship.”

Georgia is facing a crisis concerning free speech and political opposition. One of its most prominent opposition figures, Giorgi Vashadze, was sentenced to seven months in prison for refusing to appear before the Georgian Dream parliamentary investigative commission. Furthermore, a recently approved “foreign agents” bill has put significant obstacles for civil society receiving international funding. It sets heavy standards for activity and asset declarations, sparking concerns for freedom of peaceful assembly.

This follows the trend in a number of eastern European countries, which have introduced similar legislation. The “foreign agents” bill introduced in Slovakia earlier this year has restrictions on international funding for NGOs. A similar measure has been proposed in Hungary, posing a threat to foreign-funded media outlets and organizations.