Politics Georgia's ex-president Saakashvili sentenced again
Georgia's ex-president Mikhail Saakashvili has now also been sentenced to four and a half years in prison for illegally crossing the state border of the South Caucasus republic after being convicted of embezzlement last week.
17.03.2025, 10:54
SDA
This brings the total sentence for the 57-year-old, who has multiple convictions, to twelve years and six months. The city court in Tbilisi considered it proven that Saakashvili had secretly crossed the state border in 2021.
The politician was sentenced to nine years in prison last week for embezzlement. Saakashvili and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky criticize the proceedings as politically motivated.
In total, there are now four sentences against the former president, who also waged a brief war with Russia in 2008, which he lost. Saakashvili had already been sentenced to two prison terms in absentia in 2018 while he was living abroad - including for abuse of office.
Further proceedings loom
According to Georgian media, a case against him for the violent dispersal of opposition protests in 2007 is still pending, in which he also faces five to eight years in prison.
The ruling Georgian Dream party has also declared its intention to hold Saakashvili accountable for the 2008 South Caucasus War. At the time, the former Soviet republic on the Black Sea had completely lost control of its breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia - around 20 percent of its territory - which Russia then recognized as independent states.
Saakashvili was president of the country on the Black Sea from 2004 to 2013. He pushed through pro-Western reforms, but acted in an increasingly authoritarian manner. After being voted out of office, he left the country and also worked as a politician in Ukraine, of which he is a citizen.
