Judge: trial hearings may be held in prison if Saakashvili requests
Former president Mikheil Saakashvili says that he returned after eight years in political exile to remove the Georgian Dream government from power. Photo: Nino Alavidze/Agenda.ge.
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Tbilisi City Court Judge Badri Kochlamazashvili says that trial hearings in a case involving former president Mikheil Saakashvili may be held in prison if Saakashvili requests.
Law allows the holding of trial hearings in prison if a defendant has no strength to attend hearings in a court and if the defendant requests them to be held in prison. We have not received such a request from Saakashvili so far,” Kochlamazashvili said earlier today, after the Special Penitentiary Service of Georgia did not allow Saakashvili to attend a trial hearing in the court in an embezzlement case concerning him.
Kochlamazashvili also stated that Saakashvili’s lawyers have not requested the hearings be held online.
Saakashhvili’s lawyers say that the judge demanded the Special Penitentiary Service bring Saakashvili to the trial hearing. However, the agency ‘acted illegally’ and dismissed the demand.
They claim that it is Russian President Vladimir Putin ‘who makes decisions on Saakashvili’s cases’.
Saakashvili was convicted in Georgia in absentia in 2018 for abuse of power and was sentenced to six years in prison.
He has also been charged with five other offences, including the embezzlement of 8.8 million GEL in state funds between 2009 and 2013 when Saakashvili was serving his second term as the country’s president.
Former president of Georgia Mikheil Saakashvili has again not been allowed by the Special Penitentiary Service of Georgia to attend a trial in Tbilisi City Court today about an embezzlement case in which he is implicated.
Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky have discussed the issue of former Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili, who is a citizen of Ukraine, during a recent phone conversation.
Tbilisi City Court has denied the accusations of former Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili’s legal team that the court restricted the ex-president’s right to protection by banning his two lawyers from attending the trial on November 10.
Overall six criminal charges are filed against recently arrested Georgian ex-president Mikheil Saakashvili who has been convicted to six years of imprisonment in two cases while four other criminal cases are still being heard in Tbilisi City Court.
The United National Movement (UNM) opposition party rally, which aimed to block roads on both banks of the Mtkvari River today, ended at the presidential palace in central Tbilisi shortly before as the party leadership changed their previous plans.
The Georgian Chief Prosecutor's Office says that 140,000 GEL (about $44,454./€38,841) in state funds were spent on weight loss procedures in Innsbruck, Austria when Mikheil Saakashvili served as the third president of Georgia.