Extradition of ex-Georgian President Saakashvili still on agenda after restoration of Ukrainian citizenship

Georgia continues to demand the extradition of former President of Georgia Mikheil Saakashvili from Ukraine, despite the fact his Ukrainian citizenship was reinstated earlier this week, the Georgian Chief Prosecutor’s Office says.

Neither deprivation nor restoration of his [Ukrainian] citizenship will influence the ongoing legal process,” Prosecutor Koka  Katsitadze said. 

He vowed that Saakashvili “will have to answer” for the possible crimes he was charged with in Georgia.

Saakashvili, who served as Georgia’s third president from 2004-2007 and again from 2008-2013, is accused of the violent dispersal of anti-government mass protests on November 7, 2007, the unlawful raid of Imedi television company by riot police and the illegal take-over of property owned by media tycoon Badri (Arkadi) Patarkatsishvili.

The Georgian Chief Prosecutor’s Office has requested Ukraine on several occasions to extradite Saakashvili in previous years.

The office also requested Saakashvili’s extradition from Poland, to where he was deported from Ukraine in 2018.

On May 28, 2019, new Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky restored Saakashvili’s Ukrainian citizenship of which he was stripped  by his former ally, ex-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in 2017, after Saakashvili went into the opposition.