Georgia’s imprisoned former president Mikheil Saakashvili appeared severely emaciated on Monday in videolink testimony to a courtroom contemplating an abuse-of-power case in opposition to him
TBILISI, Georgia — Georgia’s imprisoned former president Mikheil Saakashvili appeared severely emaciated on Monday in videolink testimony to a courtroom contemplating an abuse-of-power case in opposition to him.
Saakashvili and his supporters declare he has been poisoned whereas imprisoned and that he now weighs about 60 kilograms (132 kilos), half of what he weighed when he was arrested in October 2021.
From a personal clinic the place he was being held, he instructed the courtroom that regardless of his poor well being, he was “spiritually match and decided to serve the nation,” in response to native information web site Agenda.
Saakashvili, who served as Georgia’s president in 2004-13 and led the so-called Rose Revolution protests that drove the earlier president out of workplace, left for Ukraine after the top of his second time period. He was later convicted in absentia of abuse of energy and sentenced to 6 years in jail.
He was arrested in October 2021 after returning to Georgia to attempt to bolster opposition forces earlier than nationwide municipal elections.
He’s now on trial on fees related to the violent dispersal of an opposition rally in 2007.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Monday known as for Georgia to ship Saakashvili to Ukraine for medical remedy and mentioned the Georgian ambassador can be known as to the overseas ministry and inspired to go away Ukraine inside two days for consultations along with his authorities.
Saakashvili holds Ukrainian citizenship and was governor of the Odesa area in 2015-16.