Georgia demands that Ukraine extradite Saakashvili associates. What is going on?
What has happened?
Georgia demands that the Ukrainian authorities extradite officials who served during the rule of Mikheil Saakashvili.
This is stated on the government website of Georgia. The country is asking for Zurab Adeishvili, the head of the international legal cooperation department at the Prosecutor General's Office. Adeishvili served as Georgia's Minister of Justice from 2008 to 2012.
His charges in Georgia include the illegal confiscation of a winery, the abduction of Koba Davitashvili, the torture of detainees and the bankruptcy of CartuBank.Ge. Ukraine is also to extradite former Odesa police chief Giorgi Lortkipanidze, who was accused of facilitating Mikheil Saakashvili's escape from Georgia.
"The Georgian government does not understand why the Ukrainian government makes such decisions aimed at artificially separating two friendly countries and peoples," the official statement reads.
The Ukrainian side has not provided any comment on the event so far.
Georgia decided to take this position after Zurab Adeishvili was included in the official delegation of Ukraine to the EU and Germany.
The German Embassy in Georgia said there were no legal grounds for not allowing former Justice Minister Zurab Adeishvili to enter the German Bundestag.
The case against Mikheil Saakashvili
Former President Mikheil Saakashvili left Georgia in 2013. Four criminal proceedings were opened against him in his homeland.
In June 2018, a court in Georgia sentenced Saakashvili to six years in prison in absentia in the case of the beating of former opposition MP Valeri Gelashvili in 2005.
On October 1, 2021, Georgia authorities announced the arrest of Saakashvili by police.
Back in February 2023, Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that the authorities in Georgia were publicly killing and torturing former President Mikheil Saakashvili.
The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry expressed its protest over the inhumane treatment of Saakashvili.
At the same time, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba added that Georgia's authorities deserve a harsh reaction from Ukraine because of their treatment of Mikheil Saakashvili.
The European Parliament also adopted a resolution calling on the authorities of Georgia to pardon and release former President Saakashvili.
Conditions of detention of the former president of Georgia
In January 2024, the speaker of the Georgian parliament, Shalva Papuashvili, demanded an apology from Zelenskyy and Moldovan President Maia Sandu for allegedly "lying" about Saakashvili.
For two years, we had to live as if Saakashvili had been tortured, poisoned and so on. Today, the conclusion of the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture says that President Zelenskyy, President Sandu and MEPs lied when they accused Georgia of torturing Saakashvili,
Papuashvili told Georgian Channel One.
Before these accusations, Ukrainian media outlet Yevropeiska Pravda reported that the Council of Europe's Committee for the Prevention of Torture had called for changes to the conditions of detention of prisoners at the Vivamed clinic.
The European Committee's mission visited Georgia on March 25-27, 2023, where it examined the conditions of access to medical care in penitentiary institutions and visited special wards at the Vivamed clinic.
The report quotes three prison patients anonymously. Ukrainian journalists managed to find out that the code "Mr S" refers to Mikheil Saakashvili.
"This is also confirmed by the specific 'route' of his movement between the prison and medical institutions mentioned in the report," the Yevropeiska Pravda editorial board says.
Mikheil Saakashvili and Ukraine
During Russia's war against Georgia in 2008, the then-presidents of Poland, Lithuania, Estonia and Ukraine visited Tbilisi and addressed a rally supporting Saakashvili.
In 2013, Mikheil Saakashvili was in Kyiv during the Revolution of Dignity on the Maidan.
The time will come when historians will write that the Russian Empire ceased to exist on the Maidan in Kyiv. And so it will be. The people will win, and I believe a better fate and future will unite all peoples,
the Georgian politician said at the time.
In 2015, after Viktor Yanukovych fled to Russia, the then President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko created the International Reform Advisory Council and appointed Mikheil Saakashvili as its chairman. The politician stated that he would coordinate the supply of Western weapons to Ukraine.
In May 2015, Saakashvili was granted Ukrainian citizenship and became the head of the Odesa Regional State Administration.
Subsequently, Mikheil Saakashvili joined the opposition to President Poroshenko, accusing his government of corruption, among other things. On November 7, 2016, Saakashvili announced his resignation as the head of the Odesa Regional State Administration. Poroshenko fired him.
In 2017, the Georgian politician illegally crossed the Polish-Ukrainian border.
Deputy Head of the State Border Guard Service Vasyl Servatiuk reported that Saakashvili crossed the border with an allegedly 'lost' Ukrainian passport.
Saakashvili claimed that his passport had allegedly been 'stolen' from a bus at the border.
In December 2017, Ukrainian Prosecutor General Yurii Lutsenko said that Saakashvili had allegedly received half a million dollars from Ukrainian businessman Serhii Kurchenko to organise protests in Ukraine. Saakashvili was detained as part of the criminal proceedings that had been opened against him.
In 2018, Poland accepted Saakashvili as a violator of the Ukrainian border. The politician left Ukraine under the readmission procedure, a state's obligation to accept its citizens, third-country nationals or stateless persons who have illegally entered the territory of one of the signatories to such agreements.
Ukraine ratified the Readmission Agreement with the EU in 2008.
The case against Saakashvili was suspended. In 2019, Volodymyr Zelenskyy returned the Georgian politician's Ukrainian citizenship and appointed him as the head of the Executive Committee for Reforms of Ukraine.
