Ukrainian police on late Dec. 8 found and detained ex-Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, a political foe of President Petro Poroshenko, Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko announced.
Saakashvili believes the arrest to be a political vendetta by Poroshenko and says the criminal case is fabricated.
Lutsenko said police arrested Saakashvili, who has been wanted by authorities for alleged criminal conspiracy with a close ally of ex-President Viktor Yanukovych, on Vidradny Street in Kyiv and put him in a temporary detention center. Authorities now have 72 hours to get a court to decide whether he will be held in detention during the investigation.
The arrest comes ahead of scheduled weekend protests to Poroshenko, who Saakashvili says should be impeached. One protest was scheduled for Dec. 10.
“The kleptocrats in power arrested me on trumped-up charges. They want to scare you. Don’t be afraid of anything and attend the peaceful Sunday rally for impeachment,” Saakashvili said in a statement that he gave to his lawyers.
The Kyiv Post reporter on the scene said Saakashvili is now at the detention center of SBU state security service, located in Askoldovy Lane in Pechersk district of Kyiv. Saakashvili annnounced he would begin a hunger strike against what he deems to be his illegal and politically motivated arrest.
Hundreds of Saakashvili’s supporters came to the detention facility. The protesters blocked two of the facility’s entrances, built barricades, brought tires and scuffled with the police.
The protesters brought burn barrels to keep themselves warm, set up a tent in front of the detention facility and pledged to camp out there as long as Saakashvili is held there.
Saakashvili’s lawyer Ruslan Chornolutsky said that the ex-Georgian president had been arrested illegally without a court warrant.
“During the fourth year of your rule, you have become simultaneously the president, prosecutor general, parliament, government, court and general producer of all television channels,” Batkivshchyna party leader Yulia Tymoshenko, who was imprisoned by Yanukovych in a political case, addressed Poroshenko in a statement. “Now you are jailing your opponents the same way Yanukovych did. Recall how it finished (for Yanukovych).”
She said that “Saakashvili was jailed not by the prosecutor general” but by Poroshenko and urged him to release Saakashvili.
Saakashvili, who served as a governor of Odesa Oblast in 2015-2016, is now one of the most vehement critics of Poroshenko. In July, when Saakashvili was outside the country, Poroshenko canceled Saakashvili’s Ukrainian citizenship, which he gave him in 2015, in what the ex-Georgian president says was a decision that violates Ukrainian and internationl law, the Constitution and due process.
Saakashvili then returned to Ukraine in September by breaking through the border with a help of hundreds of his supporters.
On Dec. 5, authorities unsuccessfully tried to arrest Saakashvili, but his supporters freed him from a police car.
Saakashvili and his lawyers said that the attempt to arrest him on Dec. 5 was illegal because the police and the SBU did not give them any notice of suspicion, arrest or search warrants, did not allow two of Saakashvili’s three lawyers to be present during his detention and used physical force against one of them. They called the attempt to detain him “a crime” and “a kidnapping.”
On the same day, Lutsenko accused Saakashvili of accepting money for his political activities from Sergiy Kurchenko, a wanted oligarch and an ex-ally of former President Viktor Yanukovych.
Poroshenko, speaking in Vilnius, Lithuania, during a press conference with President Dalia Grybauskaite, said that the case is an internal matter.
According to 112 TV station, Poroshenko said: “If we evaluate the situation around Saakashvili, it isn’t worth international attention, because there are specific crimes that were committed and we must ensure transparency of the investigation, complete openness, impartiality of the investigators, and a transparent, fair, and effective trial. These are the things we must guarantee as an independent country,” the president said, according to 112 TV station. “If someone who is accused runs away from under the detention or violates the law, the person must be held responsible. But it should have nothing to do with any type of political activity of a certain individual. The law cannot be violated, be it in Ukraine or in Lithuania.”
Sasha Borovik, a former deputy economy minister and a supporter of Saakashvili, wrote on Facebook that the arrest is not an internal matter.
“This is plain wrong to allow Ukraine handling this matter on its own. Ukraine does not have the separation of powers. The checks and balances work only between oligarchs and their institutions on one side, mafia on the other and mass protests on the third. I would not entrust justice to any of them. Yet, this is a peculiar case that deserves and requires due and fair process that is up to the Western standards. Today I stand with Saakashvili. If the evidence against him turns out to be true – he will have to leave politics for good. If they are manipulated – the president and the leaders of the security service, prosecutor office and police will have to resign. Either way, this would have major implications for Ukraine and for the West. This would also have major implications for them, if there is no fair trial. So the West should take interest and become a responsible, but impartial stakeholder. This would also give a chance for fellow Ukrainians to start believing in their justice system.”
To prove Saakashvili’s alleged guilt, Lutsenko has played what he claimed were intercepted phone conversations allegedly between Saakashvili and Kurchenko and also alleged conversations between Severion Dangadze, an official of Saakashvili’s party, and an unidentified associate of Kurchenko.
Saakashvili said that the tapes had been faked.
Five lawyers said that they saw no evidence of a crime in the recordings, even if they are genuine.
They included Vitaly Tytych; Mykola Khavronyuk, a law professor at the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy; Sergii Gorbatuk, head of the in absentia investigations unit at the Prosecutor General’s Office; criminal law expert Hanna Malyar, and Halya Coynash, a member of the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group.
Khavronyuk said there is no evidence in the recordings that Saakashvili was planning a coup d’etat, and that the financing of protests is not a crime.
Michael Bociurkiw, a global affairs analyst who has worked in Ukraine , told the Voice of America’s Ukrainian Service that this week’s events are bringing the country to a dangerous point.
“With the extreme actions this past week taken by the Poroshenko administration, it appears that Ukraine has reached a dangerous pivot point. The wins and joy of the last Maidan have been thwarted by powerful, corrupt forces, and Poroshenko is showing himself to be the weaker side,” Bociurkiw said. The arrest of Saakashvili “only serves to fan the flames of discontent,” he added.
Meanwhile, five Saakashvili supporters have been charged in criminal cases linked to his crossing of the border in September. One of them, Oleksandr Burtsev, is under arrest, and three others are under house arrest.
The authorities say Saakashvili crossed the border illegally, while he denies the charge.
Moreover, seven Georgian associates of Saakashvili, a co-organizer of the protests near the Verkhovna Rada, were deported to their homeland on Nov. 17 and Oct. 21 in what they say was an illegal operation without due process or any court warrants. Several of them say they were beaten.
The authorities deny accusations of wrongdoing.
