A Georgian court on Monday sentenced ex-president Mikheil Saakashvili to four and a half years behind bars for illegally crossing the border, bringing the pro-Western politician’s total sentence to 12.5 years.
Saakashvili, 57, was sentenced in absentia in 2018 to six years in prison for abuse of office and, last week, he received a nine-year sentence for misspending public funds from the Caucasus country.
He began serving the term in 2021, when he returned to the country from exile.
On Monday, Judge Mikheil Jinjolia ruled an additional “four years and six months of imprisonment for unlawfully infiltrating Georgian territory,” as confirmed by his legal counsel, Dito Sadzaglishvili, to AFP.
“Upon aggregation of all judicial verdicts, Mikheil Saakashvili’s total punitive confinement stands at twelve years and six months,” the magistrate proclaimed.
Both Saakashvili and numerous human rights organisations have vehemently decried the judicial proceedings as a politically charged vendetta.
Currently detained within a civilian infirmary, Saakashvili was transferred there in 2022 after enduring a gruelling 50-day hunger strike, which he undertook to denounce his incarceration.
The European Parliament has clamoured for his immediate liberation, while Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has demanded his repatriation to Kyiv. Saakashvili, who acquired Ukrainian nationality in 2019, had been designated by Zelensky as a principal reform advisor.
Zelensky, drawing a stark parallel, accused Russia of orchestrating Saakashvili’s demise “through the agency of the Georgian administration.”
The European Union and the United States have entreated Georgian authorities to guarantee Saakashvili’s access to adequate medical intervention and the upholding of his legal protections.
The Council of Europe has denounced his plight, categorising him as a “political detainee,” whilst Amnesty International has condemned his treatment as “a flagrant act of political reprisal.”
In response to the adjudication, Saakashvili castigated Georgia’s “pro-Kremlin establishment,” accusing it of “ruthlessly exacting retribution” upon him for resisting Russian dominion over Georgia in the 2008 conflict.
