On Friday the government of Georgia issued the “shock” announcement that authorities have arrested Saakashvili, though perhaps entirely expected given the ex-president’s 2018 conviction in absentia stemming from accusations of abuse of office. “I want to inform the public that the third president of Georgia, Mikheil Saakashvili, is arrested. He was transferred to a penitentiary institution,” Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili informed a news conference Friday.
Georgian police have released a video of disgraced ex-President Mikhail Saakashvili being handcuffed and taken to jail upon his return to the country. Prosecutors say he’ll be facing at least six years in prison for his crimes.
The Republic of Georgia’s former President Mikheil Saakashvili made a surprise announcement earlier this week, confirming that he had returned to Georgia after eight years in exile – during which time he mostly lived in Ukraine, and was still politically active, even rising to prominence in Ukrainian politics.
The former president returned to his home country on Friday. The politician, who left Georgia in 2013, has been the subject of multiple criminal cases into his alleged abuses of power, including a violent crackdown on the opposition. He has already been sentenced to combined nine years behind bars in absentia.
Saakashvili was arrested shortly after his arrival and was taken to a correctional facility in the city of Rustavi, located some 25km southeast of the capital Tbilisi. Police footage broadcast by local media shows a large convoy of police vehicles entering the jail’s premises with lights flashing. The handcuffed politician is brought for his perp walk shortly afterwards. Saakashvili appeared to be smiling broadly during this ‘photo opportunity’.
Shortly after the ex-president was detained, Georgian prosecutors announced the launch of a new criminal case against Saakashvili, as he allegedly entered the country illegally. Saakashvili lost his Georgian nationality back in 2015, when he was granted a Ukrainian one, since the country’s laws do not allow dual citizenship. With the standing convictions alone, the ex-president is expected to spend at least six years behind bars, prosecutors added.
Often described as a “flamboyant pro-Western reformer” who ended his second term as president in 2013, he oversaw the disastrous August 2008 Russo-Georgia War, which many observers still blame on his series of blunders and initiating border aggressions while under the illusion that powerful Western allies like the US would back him. During his Ukraine exile, he had actually briefly served as governor of Odessa, before his dual citizenship was revoked, which officials said he wasn’t supposed to have been issued in the first place.
But his homecoming appears to have been calculated precisely to stir up mass opposition rallying and anger just ahead of national municipal elections targeting the ruling Georgian Dream Party, which Saakashvili has denounced as a “usurper government”.
Georgia’s incumbent president, Salome Zourabichvili, has ruled out any possibility she would pardon her controversial predecessor.
“Everyone is equal before the law. Many people ask whether the president will pardon Saakashvili, the answer is a simple one – no, never,” she told a press briefing late on Friday. She added that pardoning the politician would be unjust for “people who suffered from his regime.”