Prosecution aims to name Saakashvili on international wanted list

The Georgian prosecution is working to ensure Georgia’s former President Mikheil Saakashvili is named on an international wanted list.

Saakashvili was sentenced in absentia to pre-trial detention by Tbilisi City Court on August 2 after being charged in relation to numerous criminal cases, including exceeding official powers, violent dispersal of an anti-governmental mass protests on November 7, 2007, unlawful raiding of Imedi television company by riot police, illegal take-over of property owned by late media tycoon Badri (Arkadi) Patarkatsishvili and spending of public money. He is already named on the national wanted list.

"As you know an internal search has been announced on Mikheil Saakashvili and ... procedures are being carried out to declare an international search on Saakashvili or to put him on a red notice,” the prosecution’s press-office said.

Yesterday Saakashvili was in Turkey, near the Georgian-Turkish border, where he met with members of United National Movement.