Ex-president of Georgia handed further 4yrs in jail

A court in Georgia has handed a further prison sentence to the jailed former president, Mikheil Saakashvili.

Saakashvili was sentenced on Monday to four-and-a-half years behind bars for illegally crossing the border when returning to the country from exile in 2021, his lawyer said.

He is already serving concurrent terms for embezzlement and abuse of power while in office, bringing his total sentence to more than 12 years.

Saakashvili has always denied wrongdoing and called his latest sentence “illegal” and “unjust”. Rights groups say his imprisonment is politically motivated.

Saakashvili opposes the governing Georgian Dream party, which favours closer ties with Russia. As president, he sought to forge closer relations with Western governments.

The former president was sentenced last week to nine years behind bars for embezzlement, running alongside the jail term he had already been serving. In 2018, he was tried in absentia and sentenced in two separate trials.

Saakashvili was arrested in 2021 after making a surprise return to Georgia ahead of the country’s local elections by smuggling himself into the country on a ferry from Ukraine.

He called for mass anti-government demonstrations, but was quickly arrested by Georgian authorities.

The 57-year-old had led Georgia over two terms between 2004 and 2013.

He was granted Ukrainian citizenship in 2015, renouncing his Georgian citizenship when he became governor of Ukraine’s Odesa region.

His citizenship was revoked in 2017 before being restored again by President Volodymyr Zelensky in 2019.

Credit: bbc.com

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