A court in Georgia handed another prison sentence to former President Mikheil Saakashvili on March 17, extending his stint behind bars to 12 1/2 years.
Saakashvili, who served as the nation’s president from 2004 to 2013, had previously been sentenced on charges of abuse of power and embezzlement.
Saakashvili and his defense have rejected the charges and sentences, handed down at Tbilisi City Court, as politically motivated and illegal.
On March 17, the court sentenced him to four years and six months in prison on charges of illegal border crossing.
Saakashvili, 57, was convicted on March 12 of embezzling 9 million Georgian lari ($3.3 million) via expense claims for what prosecutors called “luxury” spending.
The former president was already serving a six-year sentence for abuse of power. He has spent much of that time in a prison hospital after he went on hunger strikes and later alleged that he had been poisoned.
He is currently receiving medical treatment at the Vivamedi Clinic, where he is being monitored for several chronic conditions, and his health reportedly worsens periodically, according to the clinic.
Saakashvili is also on trial for a crackdown on protesters in 2007.
Wearing a T-shirt bearing the legend, “I Am Ukrainian,” he said: “This is basically sending a message ... to President Zelenskyy, for them to scare him to show what happens when you don’t surrender your country to the conqueror.
“I did not surrender Georgia. I have fought for Ukraine. This is the punishment for this.
“They want to annihilate me in prison, but no matter what, I will fight till the end.”
Saakashvili, who led the so-called Rose Revolution protests in 2003, enacted a series of reforms aimed at rooting out official corruption while he was president of the 3.7 million-strong nation.
He was also in power during a short war with Russia in 2008 that ended with the loss of Georgia’s last footholds in two separatist territories, South Ossetia and Abkhazia. He also cracked down on protesters who claimed that his rule had morphed into autocracy.
In 2012, Saakashvili’s United National Movement party lost an election to the Georgian Dream party established by Bidzina Ivanishvili, a billionaire who made his money in Russia.
The party has remained in power since 2012 and has been accused by its opponents of steering the country away from its path to European Union membership and back into Moscow’s sphere of influence.
Saakashvili fled to Ukraine in 2013, where he obtained citizenship and served briefly as governor of the country’s southern Odesa region from 2015 to 2016.
He returned to Georgia in October 2021 to try to bolster opposition forces before nationwide municipal elections and was quickly arrested.
“As long as Georgian Dream remains in power, the judiciary is a farce and will make whatever decision it is instructed to,” Basilaia said.
Following Saakashvili’s conviction Tina Bokuchava, chairman of the United National Movement, said: “Mikheil Saakashvili said that, Ivanishvili’s Russian regime, on behalf of the occupier, would sentence him to life imprisonment for the reconstruction of the country.
“In fact, we heard this today in the so-called courtroom, which has become a nest of injustice and lawlessness against Mikheil Saakashvili.”
