The first Supreme Court hearing of former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili’s lawsuit to get back his Ukrainian citizenship was held on Jan. 29.
The next hearing of the case is scheduled for Feb. 16. The hearings on Saakashvili’s citizenship are being held under a special fast-track procedure, which prompted speculation on their political character.
A more important hearing, however, will take place on Feb. 1, when the Kyiv Administrative Court of Appeal may reject Saakashvili’s application for political asylum. He says this will trigger his illegal deportation or extradition from Ukraine.
“They want to terminate my status (of an asylum seeker) in Ukraine to get rid of me even before they decide on this (citizenship) case,” Saakashvili said at the Jan. 29 hearing. “There’s a joint operation by (Russian dictator Vladimir Putin) and Ukrainian authorities to expel me from Ukraine.”
Meanwhile, Kyiv’s Pechersk Court on Jan. 29 extended the pre-trial detention of Severion Dangadze, a top official of Saakashvili’s Movement of New Forces party, for two more months. On the same day, the Pechersk Court rejected prosecutors’ request to arrest Timur Nishnianidze, another Saakashvili associate, in a diffferent criminal case.
At the Jan. 29 hearing on Saakashvili’s citizenship, President Petro Poroshenko, who canceled Saakashvili’s Ukrainian citizenship in July, was represented by a Presidential Administration official who had a power of attorney from Poroshenko’s Chief of Staff Ihor Rainin.
The lawyers of Saakashvili, who was put under nighttime house arrest on Jan. 26, argued that this contradicted the Constitution and Ukrainian law because Poroshenko, not Rainin, must have directly empowered a lawyer or representative to defend him in court. The Supreme Court rejected Saakashvili’s request to prevent the Presidential Administration official from representing Poroshenko, citing a decree issued by President Viktor Yanukovych in 2010.
The former Georgian president’s lawyers dismissed the court’s reasoning as absurd, arguing that Yanukovych’s decree contradicted the Constitution and the law.
The court’s decision was booed by hundreds of Saakashvili’s supporters, who chanted anti-Poroshenko slogans and sang the Ukrainian national anthem.
Saakashvili’s lawyers also said they had requested several days ago documents on the automatic distribution of the case that led to the selection of these judges and had not received them. They asked the court to provide the documents, and the judges agreed to delay the hearings until Feb. 16 to give time to provide the documents.
The former Georgian president’s lawyers said they suspected illegal interference in the automatic distribution of cases to select politically loyal judges.
Saakashvili’s lawyer Pavlo Bogomazov told the Kyiv Post he had found signs of illegal political interference in the selection of judges for Saakashvili’s lawsuit when the High Administrative Court selected them last year. Specifically, some judges could not take part in the selection because they were allegedly on vacation but in fact they were working and hearing cases at the time, he added.
The fact that it’s taking so much time for the court to provide the documents on the selection of judges already indicates that there was some manipulation, Bogomazov argued.
The High Administrative Court could not consider the case because it was merged into the Supreme Court in December.
One of the Supreme Court judges who are considering the case now, Svitlana Pasishnik, was vetoed by the Public Integrity Council, a civil-society watchdog, because they believe she unlawfully banned peaceful assemblies in Kyiv in November 2013. The veto was ignored by the High Qualification Commission, the High Council of Justice and Poroshenko.
The council also submitted negative information on two other Supreme Court justices who are considering the case, Tetiana Shypulina and Iryna Vasylyeva, arguing that their incomes do not match their revenues.
The judges deny the accusations of wrongdoing.
Ex-Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili speaks at a Supreme Court hearing on Jan. 29.
Citizenship cancellation
As grounds for stripping Saakashvili of citizenship in July, Poroshenko cited the alleged fact that he did not mention criminal investigations against him in Georgia in a questionnaire. Saakashvili says the questionnaire is fake, and his signature was forged.
But even regardless of the questionnaire, Saakashvili’s defense team and some independent lawyers believe the cancellation of his citizenship to be unlawful and unconstitutional.
Lawyer Vitaly Tytych told the Kyiv Post that submission of incorrect information could only lead to the loss of citizenship if such information would not allow Saakashvili to become a citizen. However, being under investigation does not affect the acquisition of citizenship and therefore cannot lead to its loss, he said.
Tytych said that only a conviction for a serious crime could be grounds for stripping someone of Ukrainian citizenship. Saakashvili had not been convicted in any criminal cases by July.
Moreover, information on Georgian investigations cannot be grounds for stripping Saakashvili of citizenship because it was known to Ukrainian authorities in 2015, and they viewed them as politically motivated cases, Kateryna Dronova, an editor from the VoxUkraine think-tank’s legal unit, said in August.
Saakashvili can argue that due process was violated because the commission’s composition was changed not long before it stripped Saakashvili of citizenship, and because the relevant documents have not been published and have not been given to Saakashvili’s representatives, Dronova said.
Saakashvili could also claim that the cancellation of his citizenship is illegal because it was politically motivated, Dronova said.
Moreover, international law and Ukraine’s Constitution ban the arbitrary cancellation of citizenship, according to Dronova and the Kharkiv Human Rights Group.
Ex-Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili’s supporters boo the judges and chant slogans on Jan. 29.
Deportation
Meanwhile, the Kyiv Administrative Court of Appeal will consider on Feb. 1 Saakashvili’s appeal against the rejection of his political asylum application.
Saakashvili says Ukrainian authorities may use a potential rejection of his political asylum application as an excuse to illegally deport or extradite him immediately, although his deportation or extradition is banned by the law.
He said on Jan. 26 that Ukrainian authorities had recently asked Poland if they could deport him there.
Saakashvili’s lawyers have argued that their client cannot be legally deported or extradited regardless of his asylum status, because it is unlawful to deport or extradite permanent stateless residents of Ukraine. Saakashvili also cannot be extradited or deported under the law because he is under investigation in a criminal case in Ukraine, they say.
Saakashvili has applied for political asylum, arguing that the criminal cases against him in his native Georgia are politically motivated. Ukrainian authorities recognized Georgia’s criminal cases against him to be politically motivated when they rejected Georgia’s extradition requests for Saakashvili in 2014 and 2015.
The Kyiv Administrative Court of Appeal on Jan. 29 refused to accept Saakashvili’s lawsuit to terminate the extradition proceedings as unlawful, based on the fact that Ukraine had twice rejected Georgia’s extradition requests.
A Tbilisi court on Jan. 5 sentenced Saakashvili to three years in prison in absentia on abuse of power charges for pardoning convicts – accusations that he believes to be fabricated and political.
In October and November, seven 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.
Human Rights Ombudsman Valeria Lutkovska confirmed in November that three of the Georgians had been illegally kidnapped and deported by the National Police without court warrants.
House arrest
The Kyiv Court of Appeal on Jan. 26 placed Saakashvili under nighttime house arrest in a criminal case. He is planning to organize a major rally for Poroshenko’s impeachment on Feb. 4.
Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko has accused Saakashvili of accepting funding from fugitive oligarch Serhiy Kurchenko, an ally of ex-President Viktor Yanukovych, to finance anti-government demonstrations and plot a coup d’etat.
Saakashvili, who was arrested on Dec. 8, believes that the case is a political vendetta by Poroshenko. The prosecutors’ alleged evidence against Saakashvili was dismissed by independent lawyers as very weak, and he was released by Pechersk Court Judge Larysa Tsokol on Dec. 11.
Tsokol ruled that Saakashvili’s detention by the Security Service of Ukraine, or SBU, prosecutors and police without a court warrant and any other legal grounds on Dec. 5 was unlawful. Saakashvili, who was freed by hundreds of his supporters on the same day, has since claimed the detention was an attempted kidnapping.
Meanwhile, David Sakvarelidze, an associate of Saakashvili, said on Jan. 25 that the criminal case against him was being sent to trial.
