Pro-Western ex-Georgian president gets new prison term
A court in Georgia has sentenced former President Mikhail Saakashvili to four and a half years in prison for illegally crossing the country's border in 2021.
The ruling on Monday adds to the 57-year-old politician's existing sentences: Nine years for embezzlement and six years for abuse of power.
'Taking into account the combination of sentences,' the judge said, his total prison term is now set at 12 years and six months.
Saakashvili came to power in Georgia on the back of protests in 2003 as a Washington-backed politician, and served as president until 2013.
After his term in office ended, he fled the country amid embezzlement allegations. He moved to Ukraine where he became a citizen, thereby forfeiting his Georgian citizenship.
While in Ukraine, he held various political roles following the 2014 Western-backed Maidan coup, but later left the country, accusing the authorities in Kiev of corruption. He was stripped of Ukrainian citizenship in 2017, becoming stateless.
After being sentenced in absentia to six years in prison for abuse of power, Saakashvili secretly returned to Georgia in 2021, defying a warrant for his arrest, and was detained by the authorities.
The court ruled on Monday that the time he has already served will be counted toward the sentence, which means he will remain in prison until 2034 unless he is pardoned or released on parole.
The former president, who is currently undergoing treatment at a hospital, did not attend the announcement of the verdict, and reportedly refused to appear at the previous court session, requesting that the trial be postponed until his recovery.
Saakashvili and his supporters have repeatedly denounced the charges against him as politically motivated. His health has reportedly deteriorated in custody, with his legal team and allies alleging mistreatment by the Georgian authorities.
Commenting on the ruling in a video address, the former leader claimed he was being unlawfully punished for 'daring and managing to transform Georgia into a successful state.' He called the sentences against him an 'executioner-like, illegal, shameful series of decisions.'
Saakashvili is also currently on trial for a violent crackdown on anti-government protesters in 2007.
His presidency was marked by a brief military conflict with Russia, which followed his order for Georgian troops to invade the then-breakaway republic of South Ossetia in August 2008, in which Russian peacekeepers stationed in the area were targeted.
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