In the photos, he is almost unrecognizable. Former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, 55, appeared very thin on Monday, July 3, during a court hearing in Tbilisi, Georgia. The opposition leader, imprisoned since 2021, attended his trial, in which he is accused, by videoconference of “abuse of power”.
Lying on his hospital bed, Ukrainian flag on the wall, he lifted his T-shirt, revealing a torso with visible ribs and a hollow stomach. Images at odds with the healthy figure he displayed before his return to the country in October 2021, after eight years of exile in Ukraine. “An absolutely innocent man is being held in detention”pleaded Mr. Saakashvili who denounces a trial ” policy “.
The degraded state of health of the former Georgian president (2004-2013) shocked in Ukraine, where Volodymyr Zelensky had appointed him, in 2020, to head the executive committee of the national reform council – Mr. Saakashvili d besides always the Ukrainian nationality. “The Georgian government must stop torturing this Ukrainian citizen”, was indignant, Tuesday, the Ukrainian president. Mr. Zelensky called for “put an end to these abuses and accept the return of Saakashvili to Ukraine”so that he receives care. In protest, he instructed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to summon the Georgian Ambassador and ask him to “leave Ukraine within 48 hours to hold consultations with its capital”. Tbilisi retaliated by denouncing a “extreme form of escalation in diplomatic relations”.
Pro-Russian positions
The leader of the “rose revolution” (2003) had been hospitalized after a fifty-day hunger strike, which ended in November 2021. Since then, his rare public appearances in court have revealed a flagrant deterioration in his state of health. In December 2022, his doctors diagnosed a “poisoning” in prison, after detecting the “presence of heavy metals” in his organism.
The treatment reserved for the former Georgian president is considered, in Ukraine as well as in Europe and the United States, as an additional sign of Georgia’s drift. This former Soviet republic, turned towards Europe, has long been a good student in the region in terms of democratic reforms, before gradually sinking into authoritarianism since the coming to power in 2012 of the Georgian Dream. A party founded by the billionaire oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili, sworn enemy of Mr. Saakashvili, and who rules the country from the shadows.
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