Official charges laid against ex-president Saakashvili and former Gov’t officials

The lawyers representing Georgia’s ex-president Mikheil Saakashvili and other former government officials – ex-Prime Minister and former Interior Minister Vano Merabishvili, former Prosecutor General Zurab Adeishvili, former Minister of Defence Davit Kezerashvili and former Mayor of Tbilisi Giorgi Ugulava, were officially given charge sheets that detailed the official charges against their clients at the Chief Prosecutor’s Office today.

Saakashvili’s lawyer Otar Kakhidze told journalists that he could not study the charge materials since it contained 80 chapters for each defendant and the documents were virtually identical. He said investigators managed the materials and he would be provided with them later today. 

"I was just given the [charge sheets] for Saakashvili and Adeishvili, which are practically identical, there is nothing new in those resolutions,” Kakhidze said. 

Georgia’s Chief Prosecutor’s Office officially filed criminal charges against ex-President Mikheil Saakashvili on July 28.The criminal case pertains to violent dispersal of anti-governmental mass protests on November 7, 2007; unlawful raiding of Imedi television company by riot police and illegal take-over of property owned by late media tycoon Badri (Arkadi) Patarkatsishvili.

In a special statement yesterday the Chief Prosecutor's Office said the investigation against Saakashvili and his co-offenders was ongoing under Article 333 of the Criminal Code of Georgia, which prescribed the deprivation of liberty and had a prison sentence from five to eight years.

Kakhidze believed the Prosecutor’s Office was going to request the Court to use detention as a preventive measure against Saakashvili however he did not have information if and when this would happen.

The new charges were officially presented to the former Interior Minister and ex-Tbilisi Mayor Gigi Ugulava in prison today too.  

Ugulaval’s lawyer told  journalist, the facts given in the charge sheet was "the whole belletristic and not a document which carries a legal sense”.

According to the information provided by the lawyers former Defense Minister Irakli Okruashvili is indicated in the list of witnesses on the criminal cases but it is now known yet whether he was questioned. Also, the list of the witnesses contains the names of former Imedi journalists and government representatives.