Ex-president Saakashvili ‘hopes int’l community won’t leave his extrajudicial captivity case unnoticed’

Ex-president of Georgia Mikheil Saakashvili, who was detained in Tbilisi on October 1, has appealed to the international community, hoping they will not allow his ‘extrajudicial captivity case unnoticed’.

In an open letter posted on Facebook, Saakashvili says his arrest was based on two court sentences ‘which no one in the world recognises’ and on an arrest warrant on two pending cases.

He further says that ‘under the Georgian law any person detained on the basis of an actual and ongoing case shall be promptly brought before court’.

I’ve been held for already 9 days without a hearing and my lawyer was just told by the judge on the case, that no hearing is to be expected for weeks to come”, Mikheil Saakashvili says in the letter.

There is an obvious attempt not to allow my public appearance before scheduled second round of elections where almost in every major city my party is neck to neck with Ivanishvili’s party”, he further says referring to the ruling Georgian Dream party.

Saakashvili, now a citizen of Ukraine who chairs the Executive Committee of the Ukrainian National Reforms Council, was convicted in 2018 in Georgia in absentia for abuse of authority and charged with four other crimes, including the recent ‘illegally crossing the border’ from Ukraine to Georgia.

The Georgian Public Broadcaster (GPB) has alleged that Saakashvili has entered Georgia’s Black Sea port city of Poti via Ukrainian private company UkrFerry’s boat Vilnius ‘hidden in a truck’.

Based on the same reports, Saakashvili set foot in Georgia on September 29 at nine p.m. via boat which departed from the trading port of Chernomorsk in the Odessa region. 

#Georgia #Tbilisi: The first footage of #Saakashvili's arrest, published by Ministry of Internal Affairs of #Georgia pic.twitter.com/bK2fOyD87x

— agenda.ge (@agenda_ge) October 1, 2021