11 Dec 2017 09:38

Ukrainian authorities want to extradite Saakashvili to Georgia - wife

TBILISI. Dec 11 (Interfax) - Sandra Roelofs, the wife of former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, believes that the authorities of Georgia and Ukraine have pooled efforts to extradite her husband from Kyiv to Tbilisi.

"I have no hope that the Ukrainian court, which is due to impose a measure of restraint on my husband tomorrow, will be fair. Most likely, the Ukrainian authorities have already told the court what decision it should make, and he will remain in custody. They may order a house arrest, but all that is being done to gain time and wait until the Georgian court pronounces a sentence on Misha, after which they plan to extradite him from Kyiv to Tbilisi," Roelofs said in a video link from Kyiv aired by the Rustavi-2 television channel on Sunday. [The Tbilisi City Court has accelerated the hearing on Saakashvili's abuse of presidential office in Georgia, including the president's executive order pardoning four policemen convicted of murdering Bank of Georgia employee Sandro Girgvliani]," she said.

The incumbent authorities of Ukraine and Georgia have agreed on Saakashvili's extradition and are acting "in a primitive and rough manner, in disregard of the international community," Roelofs.

"I have an impression that the law does not work in today's Ukraine, and every decision is made in the medieval manner, at the will of the authorities, or how else one can explain the abduction of my husband from his Kyiv residence and his transportation to the Security Service with a bag over his head," Roelofs said.

She thinks though that the scenario of Saakashvili's extradition will fail and the events in Kyiv and Tbilisi "will take another turn."

"Today's meeting of opposition forces in Kyiv shows that the Ukrainians want to live by the law, rather than by the rules set by oligarchs," Roelofs said.