The Supreme Court’s administrative cassation chamber on March 28 rejected ex-Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili’s request for political asylum in Ukraine, Saakashvili’s Movement of New Forces party said on April 3.
The Supreme Court did not invite Saakashvili’s lawyers to be present, and they only found out about the decision on April 3. The Movement of New Forces party said the court had violated Saakaashvili’s right to defend himself in court.
Saakashvili’s lawyer Pavlo Bogomazov told the Kyiv Post the defense team was considering filing appeals with the Supreme Court’s Grand Chamber, the Constitutional Court, and the European Court of Human Rights.
The Supreme Court’s administrative cassation chamber upheld a Feb. 5 decision by the Kyiv Administrative Court of Appeals, which rejected Saakashvili’s appeal against the Kyiv Administrative District Court’s rejection of his application for political asylum. He argued that he needs the status because criminal cases against him in his native Georgia are politically motivated.
Ukraine’s State Migration Service previously also denied him asylum.
One of the judges who issued the Supreme Court ruling, Tetiana Strelets, has been vetoed by the Public Integrity Council because it believes she has violated the principles of judicial ethics. Strelets has helped judges who unlawfully tried EuroMaidan activists escape justice by cancelling their dismissal by the High Council of Justice, the Public Integrity Council said.
“By refusing to summon the parties, the court has considered the case in a non-transparent and biased way without giving any assessment to the defense team’s arguments,” Saakashvili’s lawyer Ruslan Chornolutsky said. “…This usurpation of a judiciary completely controlled by (the Presidential Administration) does not give us any hope that our state will become European under the incumbent government.”
The Supreme Court is also considering Saakashvili’s lawsuit to cancel President Petro Poroshenko’s decision in July to strip him of his Ukrainian citizenship. The next hearing is scheduled for April 13.
However, the Supreme Court has already demonstrated its political bias by rejecting Saakashvili’s lawyers’ requests to question Saakashvili himself, Poroshenko, Presidential Administration officials, members of the citizenship commission and top State Migration Service officials, Bogomazov said. The only witnesses will be minor State Migration Service clerks, he added.
The Supreme Court on March 27 also upheld Poroshenko’s decision to strip Sasha Borovik, a former Saakashvili advisor, of Ukrainian citizenship in April 2017. Borovik, who lives abroad, was not allowed to take part in the court hearing.
Deported Georgians
The Kyiv Administrative District Court on March 29 recognized the State Migration Service’s decision to expel Mikhail Abzianidze, a Saakashvili associate, from Ukraine to Georgia in October as unlawful and canceled the decision. The court also ruled that a Hr 640 court fee be returned to Abzianidze.
However, the court ruling does not allow Abzianidze to return to Ukraine and re-join his wife and daughter, and will be appealed against by Saakashvili’s lawyers. The court refused to lift the travel ban on Abzianidze for unknown reasons.
In October and November, Abdizianidze and six other Georgian associates of Saakashvili were deported to Georgia by Ukrainian authorities without court warrants, with the Georgians claiming they had been kidnapped and beaten. Under Ukrainian law, forced deportation is only possible if authorized by a court.
Then Human Rights Ombudsman Valeria Lutkovska said in November that three of the Georgians had been illegally kidnapped and deported by the National Police without court warrants. The authorities denied accusations of wrongdoing, but failed to present the legal grounds for the deportations.
The authorities have so far failed to present documents for the cancelation of the Georgians’ residence permits, Bogomazov said.
Saakashvili’s deportation
Saakashvili was deported from Ukraine to Poland without a court warrant on Feb. 12. Under Ukrainian law, forced deportation is only possible if authorized by a court.
Saakashvili’s detention and expulsion violated numerous laws, lawyers for Saakashvili and independent attorneys said. The authorities deny accusations of wrongdoing, claiming that Saakashvili’s deportation was legal.
Saakashvili’s lawyers have initiated a criminal case into what they see as his kidnapping by the authorities on Feb. 12. A court later ordered the police to open a case into the alleged kidnapping, but the police refused to do so.
The State Migration Service said on Feb. 12 it had “re-admitted” Saakashvili to Poland because a court had found him guilty of illegally crossing the border, and because another court had rejected his political asylum application in January.
Serhiy Hunko, a spokesman for the State Migration Service, confirmed to the Kyiv Post that there was no court ruling on Saakashvili’s forced deportation from Ukraine. He claimed that no court ruling was necessary because it was a re-admission to Poland, the country from which Saakashvili came in September, and not a deportation per se.
Bogomazov and independent lawyers Roman Kuybida and Vitaly Tytych dismissed these explanations as absurd, saying that Saakashvili’s re-admission was only possible if combined with deportation, and a court ruling is necessary for that.
Re-admission without deportation is only possible on the border itself within 48 hours after a person has crossed the border, Tytych argued. Moreover, Border Guards only have authority on the border and in airports, and had no right to arrest Saakashvili in the center of Kyiv, he said.
According to the law, even if Saakashvili had been lawfully arrested with a deportation ruling, such a ruling could have been appealed against within 30 days, and deportation could only happen after the appeals court made its ruling.
The Kyiv Administrative Court of Appeal on Feb. 5 rejected Saakashvili’s political asylum appeal. But his lawyers filed an appeal with the Supreme Court, and, under Ukrainian law, his deportation was illegal during this appeal stage. His residence permit from Ukraine’s State Migration Service was valid until March 1.
Moreover, Saakashvili had a legal status in Ukraine – that of a permanent stateless resident – and therefore could not be deported regardless of his asylum status, his lawyers argued. Under Ukrainian law, a person who was a permanent resident of Ukraine before being stripped of citizenship – which is what happened in Saakashvili’s case – is considered a permanent stateless resident.
Saakashvili and his supporters also argued that he could not be expelled from the country because the cancellation of his citizenship by Poroshenko in July contradicted Ukrainian and international law, the Constitution and due process, which is denied by the Ukrainian authorities. His lawyers said that his extradition or deportation was impossible before a court decided on the legality of the cancellation of his citizenship.
Halya Coynash from the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group argued that “Saakashvili was illegally stripped of his Ukrainian citizenship, and the formal grounds for his deportation are mere cosmetics.”
Tytych said that a criminal case could be opened against the Border Guards for obstructing justice by preventing Saakashvili from being tried in the coup d’etat case against him.
