After an eight-year exile, the former Georgian president and opponent Mikheil Saakashvili was arrested on his return to his country, in the midst of a political crisis, Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili announced on Friday.
“Georgia’s third president, Mikheil Saakashvili, has been arrested and sent to prison,” Irakli Garibashvili said at a press conference.
” Abuse of power “
According to him, the Georgian security forces followed the movements of Mikheil Saakashvili from Ukraine and “decided on a police operation where and when there were the least obstacles to the arrest” . Mikheïl Saakachvili is wanted for “abuse of power” in a case that he considers political and for which he was sentenced in absentia to six years in prison in 2018.
The return and arrest of the 53-year-old ex-president is expected to exacerbate the political crisis in Georgia, where local elections are due to be held on Sunday, seen as a key ballot for the ruling Georgian Dream party.
Sparkles
President from 2004 to 2013, Mikheil Saakashvili had announced that he had returned to Georgia on Friday morning in a video posted on YouTube, in which he said he was in the coastal city of Batumi. Georgian authorities initially denied that the former president and founder of Georgia’s main opposition party, the United National Movement (UNM), had managed to return to his country.
Before his arrest, Mikheïl Saakachvili had called on his supporters to meet on Sunday and to march towards the capital Tbilisi “to protect the results of the vote”. Mikheïl Saakashvili is a regular hit. In 2017, he illegally entered Ukraine on foot – where he also had legal problems – surrounded by a crowd of supporters, an incredible scene.