The Tbilisi City Court refused to satisfy the petition of the defense, which demanded the release of the third president of Georgia, Mikheil Saakashvili, for health reasons, the First Channel of Georgia reports.
The court has been considering the lawyers’ petition since December 2022. The defense asked to postpone the execution of the sentences previously handed down to Saakashvili, or to release him from punishment.
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Saakashvili himself called the court hearings “a complete farce” and noted that in fact the court approved his death sentence. “State experts didn’t even bother to see me even once, but the court believed them, and not the international team, which included a Nobel Prize winner, who said that if I stay in prison, I will die,” he stressed.
Earlier, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine called on the Georgian authorities to immediately stop bullying a citizen of Ukraine, former President of Georgia Mikheil Saakashvili and transfer him to Ukraine.
The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry also asked foreign governments and international organizations to publicly defend Mikhail Saakashvili, “whose life was in danger due to political repressions by the Georgian authorities.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky also said the day before that the Georgian authorities were “killing” Saakashvili. According to him, Ukraine treats the internal issues of Georgia with great respect, but does not understand such an attitude towards him.
Saakashvili returned to Georgia on September 29, 2021 illegally and was immediately detained, and soon sentenced to six years in prison: he is currently serving a sentence on two criminal cases related to abuse of power. One is connected with the violent dispersal of an opposition rally, the other with the takeover of the independent TV company Imedi in 2007. Saakashvili was also charged with embezzlement of state funds on an especially large scale and with illegal crossing of the state border last year, these cases are still pending in the courts.
In conclusion, Saakashvili went on a hunger strike, after which his health deteriorated sharply. In May, he was transferred to the Vivamedi private hospital, and his trial is ongoing. However, in recent months, meetings have been canceled due to the fact that the former president of Georgia could not physically appear in court.
American toxicologist and narcologist David Smith on December 29 at a court hearing in Tbilisi said that traces of heavy metals were found in Saakashvili’s body: he could have been poisoned in prison. On January 31, his press secretary Georgy Chaladze said that the politician was transferred to intensive care due to deteriorating health, but the director of the clinic, Nino Nadiradze, did not confirm the information.
In early January of this year, pickets were held in Georgia and in more than 20 countries in support of Saakashvili. Participants called for the politician to be released and given the opportunity to undergo treatment in the EU. Some activists accused the current Georgian authorities of seeking Saakashvili’s death.
“A transfer to the intensive care unit won’t help him.” Lawyer of Mikheil Saakashvili about the serious state of his health
