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Parliament committee chair says “meaningless, distorted” entry on former president Saakashvili reason for not supporting PACE resolution

Samkharadze noted the Georgian delegation had been one of the co-sponsors of the Parliamentary Assembly resolution entitled “Further Escalation in the Russian Federation's Aggression against Ukraine”. Photo: Parliament of Georgia

Agenda.ge, 17 Oct 2022 - 16:37, Tbilisi,Georgia

Nikoloz Samkharadze, the chair of the Georgian parliament's foreign affairs committee, on Monday explained a “meaningless and distorted” entry on the country’s former president Mikheil Saakashvili had become the reason for the Georgian delegation’s refusal to support a Council of Europe resolution on the Russian military escalation in Ukraine.

However, he said the delegation could not support the resolution after the appearance of a line about Saakashvili that referred to the imprisoned politician as a “prisoner of [Russian president Vladimir] Putin”.

The only issue why this resolution was not supported was that in it appeared a completely meaningless and distorted entry that Mikheil Saakashvili is a ‘prisoner of Putin’, along with unidentified persons”, the parliament official said.

The resolution adopted on Thursday called for a “review of cases of other political prisoners opposed to President Putin, in Russia and in other countries, and for their release, including Mikheil Saakashvili, Ukrainian citizen and former president of Georgia”.

Samkharadze also stressed about 400 resolutions in reference to the conflict in Ukraine had been adopted by international organisations over the last six months, with Georgia supporting “all of them”.

Arrested in Tbilisi on his clandestine return to the country from Ukraine ahead of October 2021 municipal elections, Saakashvili is currently serving a six-year prison term after he was sentenced in absentia in 2018 on two separate charges of abuse of power.

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