Former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili said on Jan. 19 that Ukrainian authorities may illegally extradite him to Georgia or illegally deport him on Jan. 23.
The Kyiv Administrative Court of Appeal will consider at 10 a.m. on Jan. 22 rejecting Saakashvili’s application for political asylum, which he says the authorities may use as an excuse to deport or extradite him immediately.
“They’ll try to make sure that I’m no longer in the country on Tuesday (on Jan. 23),” Saakashvili said at the Kyiv Court of Appeal.
Saakashvili claimed that President Petro Poroshenko had ordered courts to speed up his deportation or extradition after returning from his secret vacation in the Maldives.
Saakashvili’s lawyers have argued that he cannot be legally deported or extradited regardless of his asylum status since it is unlawful to deport or extradite permanent stateless residents of Ukraine. He also cannot be extradited or deported under the law because he is under investigation in a criminal case in Ukraine.
The Kyiv Court of Appeal on Jan. 19 delayed hearings on placing Saakashvili under house arrest in a criminal case until Jan. 26. The court attributed this to the fact that a relative of one of the judges’ had died.
Saakashvili also said that the Security Service of Ukraine, or SBU, had disrupted several of his recent meetings with residents of Odesa and turned off the light in a hotel to prevent one of the meetings. The SBU did not respond to a request for comment.
Asylum hearings
One of the judges who will consider 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.
Hanechko’s father was a top prosecutor in the Shevchenko District, where she was appointed as a judge, which triggered accusations of a conflict of interest.
President Viktor Yushchenko asked the High Council of Justice to fire Hanechko for allegedly violating her oath.
The Kyiv District Administrative Court on Jan. 3 fully backed the State Migration Service’s decision to reject Saakashvili’s application for political asylum.
However, the State Migration Service appealed the ruling despite the fact that it was in its favor. The service said had appealed the ruling because it wanted to correct some details in the text of the ruling.
Saakashvili believes that the service had appealed the ruling to speed up his possible deportation or extradition, since the appellate court’s decision could be used as an excuse to expel him from Ukraine. Otherwise Saakashvili’s lawyers would have had one month to appeal the ruling after Jan. 3.
Saakashvili’s lawyer Pavlo Bogomazov and independent lawyer Vitaly Tytych told the Kyiv Post that it was unlawful for the State Migration Service to appeal a ruling that completely satisfied the service’s demands. They 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.
Seeking asylum
Saakashvili was stripped by Poroshenko of Ukrainian citizenship in July and broke through Ukraine’s western border with Poland in September. He has applied for political asylum, arguing that the criminal cases against him in his native Georgia are politically motivated.
He also believes that the cancellation of his citizenship violates Ukrainian and international law, the Constitution and due process.
Ukrainian authorities had recognized Georgia’s criminal cases against him to be politically motivated when they rejected Georgia’s extradition requests for Saakashvili in 2014 and 2015.
Saakashvili’s lawyers said on Jan. 3 the extradition requests sent by Georgia in 2014, 2015 and 2017 were identical, and that is why there are no grounds for assuming that the recent request is not politically motivated.
Moreover, last November the European Court of Human Rights also recognized a criminal case against Saakashvili’s ally and ex-Georgian Interior Minister Vano Merabishvili as political, the lawyers added.
The lawyers also said that the State Migration Service had not had any time to analyze the vast amount of materials that they provided because it made its decision within one day – another indicator of what they see as the service’s political motive.
The State Migration Service claimed that the situation in Georgia had changed since 2015 and that there was no risk for Saakashvili to be politically persecuted in his home country.
The Kyiv District Administrative Court, which considered Saakashvili’s lawsuit, is headed by Pavlo Vovk, an alleged associate of lawmaker Oleksandr Hranovsky, a top Poroshenko ally who allegedly influences the judiciary. Vovk and Hranovsky, who denies influencing judges, have been filmed meeting in a Kyiv restaurant.
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.
Extradition
Meanwhile, Tbilisi court on Jan. 5 sentenced Saakashvili to three years in prison in absentia on abuse of power charges.
Saakashvili said that although his extradition or deportation is banned under Ukrainian law, Ukrainian authorities could illegally use the Georgian court decision as an excuse to extradite or deport him.
In Georgia, Saakashvili is accused of abusing his power by pardoning four police officers convicted in 2006 of murdering Georgian banker Sandro Girgvliani. In 2008 Saakashvili cut the prison terms of about 170 convicted law enforcement and military officers, including the four convicts in the Girgvliani case. The pardons happened after the Russian invasion of Georgia in August 2008.
Saakashvili dismissed the accusations as absurd, arguing that his right to pardon them was not constitutionally limited.
House arrest
Hearings on Saakashvili’s house arrest had been already delayed three times before for various reasons – on Dec. 22, Jan. 3 and Jan. 11.
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 on Dec. 11 that Saakashvili’s detention by the Security Service of Ukraine, known as the 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, believes the detention to be a kidnapping.
She said the prosecutors had failed to provide evidence to justify placing any restrictions on Saakashvili. 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.
