TBILISI – Former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, who has been on a hunger strike at the Rustavi prison for a month, has dropped over 20 kilos, and his health condition has worsened, Yelyzaveta Yasko, Saakashvili’s girlfriend, said after visiting him in prison.
“He has dropped over 20 kilos now,” Yasko, a Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada deputy, told journalists on Nov. 1.
“This is an outrageous scandal, and it is wrong that President Saakashvili is in jail and his condition has been worsening from day to day. It’s painful for me to see him. The president must be freed,” she said.
Saakashvili is holding out, but his hunger strike cannot last endlessly, she said.
“The Ukrainian position is that Saakashvili should return to Ukraine, but this depends on the Georgian authorities,” she said.
Saakashvili, former Georgian president and currently a citizen of Ukraine, secretly arrived in Georgia from Ukraine on Sept. 29. He was detained in Tbilisi on Oct. 1 and is currently being held in prison in Rustavi.
Georgia earlier declared Saakashvili wanted as a person convicted in absentia in several criminal cases and treated as a suspect in some others. The Georgian authorities warned repeatedly that he would be detained immediately after he crossed the border. Saakashvili has described his detention as unlawful and the charges brought against him as falsified. He declared a hunger strike on Oct. 1.
