Georgia has sentenced 12 opposition members to jail after finding the group guilty of plotting to bring down the pro-Western government.
To protest against the prosecution, the 12 did not attend the sentencing on Friday.
Their lawyers and opposition leaders said the trial was politically motivated and Georgia's judiciary was not independent.
The group is linked to the opposition Justice Party led by Igor Giorgadze, a former national security minister believed to be in Russia.
He left Georgia after being accused of being behind a 1995 bomb attack on Eduard Shevardnadze, the then-president.
Mikhail Saakashvili, Georgia's president, has distanced the ex-Soviet republic from Russia and come closer to the European Union and Nato.
He says the Justice Party is financed by Moscow and is used as an instrument to undermine the government. Giorgadze's niece, Maya Topuria, received the longest prison term of 8 1/2 years.
False evidence
Topuria's lawyer, Melinda Sarafa, said in a statement: "The verdict convicting Maia Topuria and her co-defendants is a lie, based entirely on false evidence.
"But this is not a surprise in a judical system that last year convicted nearly 17,000 of its people and acquitted less than 40."
At the start, the trial included 19 defendents arrested in September 2006, but six were acquitted in the course of hearings.
Russia denies any links to Giorgadze, although he often gives interviews to Russian television channels criticising Saakashvili, who is viewed with deep mistrust by the Kremlin.