Judges of the Kyiv Administrative Court of Appeal on Jan. 22 partially recused themselves from hearings on ex-Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili’s political asylum, putting the brakes on the proceedings for now.
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. Previously he said he could be deported or extradited on Jan. 23.
Emotions ran high as hundreds of Saakashvili’s supporters filled the large courtroom and shouted slogans supporting him and criticizing the authorities. When they sang Ukraine’s national anthem, the judges did not stand up and were booed by the protesters for not showing respect for the anthem.
Several minor scuffles between Saakashvili’s supporters and the police also took place in the courtroom.
Saakashvili claimed at the hearing that President Petro Poroshenko, after returning from his secret vacation in the Maldives, had ordered the courts to speed up the former Georgian president’s deportation or extradition.
“Everything that’s going on here is being done on the orders of Petro Poroshenko,” Saakashvili said.
The Presidential Administration has denied any involvement in the case.
Saakashvili also compared what he views as Poroshenko’s efforts to crack down on political opponents, including himself, to Russian dictator Vladimir Putin’s crackdown on opposition politician Alexei Navalny and other authoritarian practices.
“The revolution aimed to get rid of any dictatorship, including a pro-Russian one,” he said. “What’s the difference between (Ukrainian judges) and Russian judges? Ukraine – the cradle of democracy for the whole (post-Soviet) region – has been seized by a gang that acts in the same way as Putin’s gang.”
Recusal
The meaning of the judges’ decision is not entirely clear, and will be clarified only when they release the official text, one of Saakashvili’s lawyers, Pavlo Bogomazov, told the Kyiv Post.
The judges either let the Supreme Court decide on recusing them, or they recused only one of the three judges, or they delayed a decision on recusing themselves, Bogomazov said.
Saakashvili’s lawyers asked the judges to recuse themselves, as they believe them to be biased.
They said the judges had denied Saakashvili access to justice by not giving him enough time – 30 days – to appeal against the Jan. 3 rejection of his political asylum application by the Kyiv District Administrative Court. The appeal hearing was scheduled very quickly, in contrast with common practice, the lawyers added.
The judges also unlawfully accepted the State Migration Service’s appeal against the Kyiv District Administrative Court’s decision, which completely satisfied the service’s demands, Saakashvili’s lawyers said. They also said that the service had unlawfully appealed the decision in its own favor so as to speed up Saakashvili’s deportation or extradition from Ukraine, denying him the right to file an appeal within 30 days.
Saakashvili and his lawyers said that there had been no precedents of state agencies appealing rulings that completely met their demands.
State Migration Service spokesman Serhiy Hunko told the Kyiv Post he could not comment on the accusations.
Saakashvili speaks at the Kyiv Administrative Court of Appeal on Jan. 22.
Judges
One of the judges who considered Saakashvili’s asylum application on Jan. 22, Olena Hanechko, was vetoed by the Public Integrity Council, a civil-society watchdog, during the competition for the new Supreme Court in 2017 because they believe she does not meet ethical and integrity standards.
In 2007, Hanechko released the stepson of Ukrainian oligarch Dmytro Firtash, as a result of which he fled Ukraine. He was accused of killing two people in a traffic accident.
According to the Public Integrity Council, Hanechko’s expenses do not match her revenues, and her asset declarations do not match information in state registers.
The second judge who considered the appeal, Natalya Litvina, ranked second among Kyiv judges in terms of gifts and prizes received, getting Hr 1.6 million in 2015, according to the liga.net news site.
The third judge, Andriy Korotkikh, failed to get the minimum score during anonymous testing as part of last year’s competition of the Supreme Court.
Asylum status
Saakashvili’s lawyers have argued that their client cannot be legally deported or extradited regardless of his asylum status, since 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.
Meanwhile, 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, and they said they had been kidnapped and beaten. Under Ukrainian law, forced deportation is only possible if authorized by a court.
Human Rights Ombudsman Valeria Lutkovska said in November that three of them had been illegally kidnapped and deported by the National Police without court warrants.
House arrest
Earlier, the Kyiv Court of Appeal on Jan. 19 delayed hearings on placing Saakashvili under house arrest in a criminal case until Jan. 26.
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, 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.
