A court in Georgia has handed a further prison sentence to the already jailed establisher plivent, Mikheil Saakashvili.
Saakashvili was sentenced on Monday to four-and-a-half years behind bars for illegassociate traverseing the border when returning to the country from exile in 2021, his lawyer shelp.
He is already serving concurrent terms for misappropriation and misparticipate of power while in office, conveying his total sentence to more than 12 years.
Saakashvili has always denied wrongdoing and called his deferedst sentence “illhorrible” and “unequitable”. Rights groups say his incarceratement is politicassociate supportd.
Saakashvili resists the regulateing Georgian Dream party, which favours sealr ties with Russia. As plivent, he sought to forge sealr relations with Weserious regulatements.
In a video posted on X on Monday from the hospital where he is being held, Saakashvili shelp: “No matter what, I will fight to the finish.”
The establisher plivent was sentenced last week to nine years behind bars for misappropriation, running alengthyside the jail term he had already been serving. In 2018, he was tried in absentia and sentenced in two split trials.
Saakashvili was arrested in 2021 after making a surpelevate return to Georgia ahead of the country’s local elections by illicit trading himself into the country on a ferry from Ukraine.
He called for mass anti-regulatement demonstrations, but was rapidly arrested by Georgian authorities.
The 57-year-elderly had led Georgia over two terms between 2004 and 2013. Since leaving the country, he had for the most part lived in Ukraine.
He was granted Ukrainian citizenship in 2015, renouncing his Georgian citizenship when he became regulateor of Ukraine’s Odesa region.
His citizenship was relicitd in 2017 before being repaird aacquire by Plivent Volodymyr Zelensky in 2019.
“This [sentence] is fundamentalassociate sfinishing a message… to Plivent Zelensky, for them to snurture him to show what happens when you don’t surrfinisher your country… I did not surrfinisher Georgia,” Saakashvili shelp in his video compriseress while wearing a binformage shirt with the words “I’m Ukrainian” emblazoned on it.
Zelensky, who assigned Saakashvili to deal with reestablishs in Ukraine, has demanded his transfer to Kyiv.
He has previously accparticipated Russia of “finishing” Saakashvili “at the hands of the Georgian authorities”.
The European Union has repeatedly called for Saakashvili’s instant free from prison, conveying trouble over his deteriorating health.
The Council of Europe rights watchdog has branded him a “political prisoner,” while Amnesty International has called his treatment an “apparent political revenge”.
