The Kyiv District Administrative Court will consider on Jan. 3 rejecting former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili’s application for political asylum, which he says the authorities could use as an excuse to deport or extradite him.
The court on Dec. 26 delayed a hearing on Saakashvili’s lawsuit against the State Migration Service until 3 p.m. on Jan. 3. Saakashvili is disputing the State Migration Service’s rejection of his application for political asylum in Ukraine.
Under Ukrainian law, an applicant for political asylum cannot be deported or extradited.
“Today the administrative court was supposed to reject my asylum application on the Presidential Administration’s orders in order to extradite me before the end of this year,” Saakashvili wrote on Facebook. “The court refused to make this decision and delayed the hearing until Jan. 3.”
President Petro Poroshenko has denied influencing the judiciary to persecute Saakashvili.
Meanwhile, the Kyiv Court of Appeal will consider placing Saakashvili under house arrest in a criminal case at 11 a.m. on the same day – Jan. 3.
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 the case to be a political vendetta by Poroshenko. The alleged evidence against Saakashvili presented by prosecutors has been dismissed by independent lawyers as very weak, and he was released by Pechersk Court Judge Larysa Tsokol on Dec. 11.
Saakashvili was also summoned to the Security Service of Ukraine, or SBU, for an interrogation and the taking of voice samples for Dec. 26.
However, he said one summons sent for two separate actions on one day contradicted the Criminal Procedure Code. Saakashvili came to the SBU building on Dec. 26 and filed a request for the service to serve him two separate summons, refusing to be interrogated before that.
The SBU did not respond to a request for comment.
He also said that he would initiate a criminal case against the SBU in Ukraine and a lawsuit at the European Court of Human Rights for what he believes to be “banditry,” an assault on him and his kidnapping on Dec. 5.
Judge Tsokol ruled on Dec. 11 that Saakashvili’s detention by the SBU, prosecutors and police without a court warrant on Dec. 5 was unlawful. Saakashvili, who was freed by hundreds of his supporters on the same day, believes it to be a kidnapping.
“The SBU acted like usual bandits,” he said. “They kidnapped me from my home, used physical force against me and other people – illegally and without a single document that authorized them to do so. According to the Pechersk Court’s ruling, they are criminals.”
Saakashvili said that, according to his sources, Poroshenko had given an order to Serhiy Syomochko, head of the SBU’s Kyiv branch, to arrest him on Dec. 5 without consulting SBU Chief Vasyl Hrytsak. He had also previously said that Poroshenko was giving orders in the Saakashvili case to Vyacheslav Abroskin, first deputy chief of the National Police, without consulting Interior Minister Arsen Avakov.
Tsokol said in her ruling that the prosecutors’ decision to put Saakashvili on a wanted list was also unlawful.
The judge also referred to contradictory testimony allegedly given by unidentified SBU agents “Hare” and “Wolf.” The alleged events to which the agents referred as having happened in the past took place after the agents mentioned them, the judge said.
“These materials are not convincing and sufficient enough to decide on imposing restrictions on suspect Mikheil Saakashvili,” Tsokol said. “…The prosecutors also failed to provide any evidence that there are risks (of Saakashvili fleeing) and to prove that house arrest is needed to prevent them.”
Saakashvili has also argued that the authorities were planning to fire Judge Tsokol, who released him from custody on Dec. 11, to take revenge on her for that decision. The High Council of Justice on Dec. 22 opened an internal probe against Tsokol.
Kyiv Court of Appeal Judge Oleh Prysyazhnyuk, who will preside over the Jan. 3 hearing on Saakashvili’s house arrest, upheld the verdict in the criminal case against Lutsenko, then an opposition politician, in 2012. The Lutsenko case has been recognized as political by Ukrainian and European authorities.
David Sakvarelidze, a Saakashvili ally, said on Dec. 17 that he believes Lutsenko would use Prysyazhnyuk’s background to pressure him in the Saakashvili case.
In April Prysyazhnyuk also released riot police officer Vitaly Honcharenko, who has been charged with murdering EuroMaidan protesters, from custody, and Honcharenko fled to Russia.
Saakashvili, who was stripped by Poroshenko of citizenship in July and broke through the Ukrainian border in September, has applied for political asylum, arguing that the criminal cases against him in his native Georgia are politically motivated. He also believes the cancellation of his citizenship violates Ukrainian and internationl law, the Constitution and due process.
Saakashvili’s lawyers say that Ukrainian authorities might try to illegally deport or extradite him from Ukraine by the end of this year or early next year, with the completion of an extradition check scheduled for late December.
Under Ukrainian law, Saakashvili cannot be deported or extradited regardless of asylum status because the deportation or extradition of permanent stateless residents of Ukraine, including Saakashvili, is banned by the law, his lawyers argue. They also say that he cannot be extradited or deported because Ukraine has already rejected Georgia’s previous extradition requests for him as politically motivated and because he is under investigation in a criminal case.
