Former Georgian President Saakashvili gets cumulative prison sentence of 12 years and 6 months - court ruling
TBILISI. March 17 (Interfax) - The Tbilisi City Court has sentenced former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili to four years and six months in prison for illegally crossing the border, Georgian media reported on Monday.
Pronouncing the sentence handed down on Saakashvili for illegally crossing the border, Judge Mikheil Jinjolia said that, taking into account the sentences given to him previously, his cumulative prison sentence has now reached 12 years and six months.
Last week, the court sentenced Saakashvili to nine years in prison for massive embezzlement of public funds. Before the new sentences were pronounced, Saakashvili had been serving a six-year prison sentence on two criminal cases, in which he was charged with issuing an order to beat a parliamentarian and a decision to grant parole to three police officers convicted of killing a bank employee.
A court has yet to hear another criminal case against Saakashvili, which concerns the dispersal of an opposition rally in 2007, during which two people died.
United National Movement, an opposition party led by Saakashvili, has branded the new sentence given to him for illegally crossing the border as unlawful.
"This sentence is not only unlawful, as the Georgian authorities are illegitimate, but is also senseless. We know for sure that our country's freedom is inevitable, just as President Saakashvili's freedom," United National Movement Chair Tina Bokuchava told journalists.
She described Saakashvili as a hostage of the incumbent authorities and accused them of seeking to sentence him to life in prison.
Saakashvili secretly arrived in Georgia on September 29, 2021. He was detained in Tbilisi on October 1 and then put in jail in the city of Rustavi, where he went on a hunger strike. On November 8, Saakashvili was transferred to a prison hospital in Tbilisi without the consent of his relatives or lawyers. He was taken to a military hospital in the town of Gori on November 20. On May 12, 2022, Saakashvili was moved to the Vivamedi clinic in Tbilisi, where he is currently staying.
Several criminal cases were opened against Saakashvili in Georgia. He called his detention unlawful and the charges brought against him falsified.