Georgia sentences imprisoned former president Saakashvili to a further 9 years behind bars

TBILISI, Georgia (AP) — A court in Georgia on Wednesday convicted imprisoned former president Mikheil Saakashvili on embezzlement charges and handed him another prison term of nine years.

Saakashvili, who served as Georgia’s president in 2004-13, is already serving a six-year prison term for abuse of power. He was convicted in absentia in 2018, and arrested in 2021 upon his return to Georgia.

In the new case against Saakashvili, Georgia's prosecutors accused him of embezzling and spending 9 million Georgian lari (roughly $3.2 million) worth of state funds funneled through Georgia's State Security Service on various personal expenses, including luxury services and his sons’ education. Saakashvili's defense has denied the charges and insisted they were politically motivated.

The new sentence, handed down by the Tbilisi City Court in the Georgian capital, means that Saakashvili, 57, will likely remain incarcerated until 2030. Wednesday's ruling also ordered Teimuraz Janashia, the former head of the State Security Service, to pay a fine of 300,000 Georgian lari (about $108,000).

Saakashvili rose to fame after he led the so-called Rose Revolution protests in 2003 that drove his predecessor out of office. As president, he enacted a serious of ambitious reforms tacking official corruption in Georgia, a South Caucasus nation of 3.7 million. He also presided over a short but fierce war with Russia in 2008 that ended with the humiliating loss of its last footholds in two separatist territories, and he cracked down on protesters who charged that his zeal had mutated into autocracy.

In 2012, Saakashvili's United National Movement party lost the election to the Georgian Dream party established by Bidzina Ivanishvili, a shadowy billionaire who made his fortune in Russia. Georgian Dream has remained in power ever since, tightening its grip on democratic freedoms and drawing accusations from the opposition of steering the country away from the path toward European Union membership and back into Russia's sphere of influence.

Saakashvili left for Ukraine in 2013, obtained Ukrainian citizenship and served as a governor of the country's southern Odesa region in 2015-16. He returned to Georgia in October 2021 to try to bolster opposition forces before nationwide municipal elections and was quickly arrested.

The former president spent much of his time behind bars in a prison hospital after going on a hunger strikes and later claiming that he had been poisoned. He is currently receiving medical treatment at the Vivamedi Clinic, where he is being monitored for several chronic conditions, and his health reportedly worsens periodically, according to the clinic.

Saakashvili was not present at the Wednesday's court hearing for health reasons. The verdict elicited protests from his supporters in the courtroom, who shouted “Bidzina's slave” at the judge, referring to Ivanishvili.

In a statement posted on his social media pages, Saakashvili sarcastically called the verdict “a huge surprise” and “the will of the oppressor.” He has argued that the authorities "have practically sentenced me to life imprisonment for official presidential office expenses.”

Tina Bokuchava, chairman of the United National Movement, said that the verdict “shows that Ivanishvili’s Russian regime sees the Georgian state and the idea of the Georgian state as its enemy."

“They are fighting against president Mikheil Saakashvili, who dedicated his whole life to the Georgian state,” she said. “They will not frighten anyone with this verdict, nor will they stop anyone. On the contrary, we will fight till the end.”