TBILISI (Reuters) – Lawyers representing Georgia’s jailed ex-president Mikheil Saakashvili said on Wednesday that the country’s authorities wanted him to die in prison as he renewed a hunger strike in protest over his treatment.
Saakashvili is serving a six-year sentence for abuse of power in a conviction supporters say was politically motivated.
His medical team say his health has worsened significantly in prison and lawyers have filed a case for his sentence to be suspended so he can seek urgent medical treatment abroad.
On Wednesday, a Tbilisi court heard some opening arguments from prosecutors before it adjourned until Dec. 22 in the second week-long delay to proceedings.
Saakashvili said he would renew a hunger strike in protest over not being allowed to appear in court via video link.
“This is a violation of both Georgian and international rights. Therefore, I am forced to resort to an extreme form of protest – a hunger strike. There is a limit to this ridicule and humiliation,” he said in a statement released through his lawyers.
Georgia’s Justice Minister Rati Bregadze told local TV on Tuesday that Saakashvili is “simulating” the seriousness of his condition in a transparent attempt to secure his release.
“The aim is to kill Mikheil Saakashvili. It’s for him to die in prison – there is no other name for it,” Saakashvili’s lawyer Shalva Khachapuridze said after Wednesday’s hearing.
Saakashvili has not been seen in public for months and his team says the authorities are trying to conceal the state of his health.
A pro-Western reformer, Saakashvili spearheaded a pro-democracy anti-corruption campaign in ex-Soviet Georgia while president between 2004-2013.
But critics, including those in the ruling Georgian Dream party, say he abused his power and lost popular support.
He was convicted in absentia in 2018 and sent to prison last October after he returned to Georgia from Ukraine, where he had been advising President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on reforms.
(Reporting by David Chkhikvishvili in Tbilisi; Writing by Jake Cordell in Tbilisi; Editing by Kirsten Donovan)
