Georgia’s Tbilisi City Court on June 28 sentenced in absentia former Georgian President and ex-Odesa Oblast Governor Mikheil Saakashvili to six years in prison on charges of ordering the beating of opposition lawmaker Valery Gelashvili.
In 2016, top Georgian police officials Erekl Kodua and Gia Siradze were sentenced to nine years in prison each for beating opposition lawmaker Valery Gelashvili in 2005 after he criticized Saakashvili.
Also in 2016, Tbilisi City Court sentenced ex-Georgian Interior Minister Vano Merabishvili to six years and nine months in prison on charges of organizing the beating.
Last November, the European Court of Human Rights declared the criminal cases against Merabishvili to be political. The U.S. authorities have also expressed concerns about the possible political character of the Georgian cases against Saakashvili and his allies.
The alleged evidence against Saakashvili was exclusively based on testimony by two of his political foes – Georgian pro-Kremlin politician Nino Burzhanadze and ex-Georgian Defense Minister Irakli Okruashvili, Saakashvili’s Georgian lawyer Beka Basilaia told the Kyiv Post.
“There is no rule of law in Georgia,” Basilaia said. “All courts are in the pocket of oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili. The courts make decisions depending on the political situation.”
Saakashvili’s political enemy Ivanishvili, who runs Georgia’s ruling party, has denied influencing the courts.
Basilaia said that the court’s decision coincided with the stepping up of Saakashvili’s political activities in Georgia ahead of the country’s presidential election scheduled for October.
Dangadze case
On May 24, Severion Dangadze, the head of the Kyiv branch of Saakashvili’s Movement of New Forces, was sentenced to a five-year suspended sentence as part of a plea bargain. The information became known when the Ukrainska Pravda online newspaper found it on the site of the Kyiv Court of Appeals on June 26.
Dangadze was arrested in December when Saakashvili organized a major protest movement against Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko. He was released from custody in May after changing his lawyer and concluding a plea bargain with prosecutors.
Dangadze, who is accused of taking money from ex-President Viktor Yanukovych’s ally and tycoon Serhiy Kurchenko, was convicted on charges of “financing actions aimed at changing Ukraine’s borders.”
Saakashvili and his allies have portrayed the case as a smear campaign and publicity stunt by Poroshenko and Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko to label Saakashvili’s supporters “Kremlin agents.”
Since a plea bargain was concluded with Dangadze, the court did not assess any of the evidence in the criminal case, Dangadze’s former Ukrainian lawyer Roman Kruglyak told the Kyiv Post.
Kruglyak also said that Dangadze and his relatives had been pressured to reach a plea bargain, and a court ordered law enforcers to investigate this pressure. Dangadze’s mother has been threatened, and her arm has been broken, he added.
Saakashvili and his Movement of New Forces argued that Dangadze had been pressured to give testinomy on the former Georgian president.
The case has also been criticized because two key witnesses were questioned as part of a closed court hearing, and their identity was not disclosed to Dangadze’s lawyers or anyone else.
Both the plea bargain and the court ruling have been made secret.
Saakashvili’s lawyer Pavlo Bogomazov cast doubt on the ruling due to its secrecy and compared it to the 2017 ruling by a Kramatorsk court on the confiscation of $1.5 billion allegedly belonging to Kurchenko.
The Kramatorsk ruling, which was made public by Al Jazeera in January, has been criticized by lawyers, who say it contains no legal grounds for the confiscation. Poroshenko’s opponents also argue that it was made secret because it implicated Poroshenko allies – ex-National Bank of Ukraine Governor Valeria Gontareva and Poroshenko’s banker, Makar Paseniuk, both of whom deny the accusations of wrongdoing.
The Prosecutor General’s Office and the Security Service of Ukraine, which investigated the Dangadze case, did not respond to requests for comment.
Previous case
In January a Tbilisi court also sentenced Saakashvili in absentia to three years in prison on abuse of power charges.
Saakashvili was 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 part of Georgia in August 2008.
Saakashvili dismissed the accusations as absurd, arguing that his right to pardon them was not constitutionally limited.
Deportation
Saakashvili was stripped of his Ukrainian citizenship by Poroshenko in July as he stepped up his criticism of the Ukrainian authorities.
Saakashvili and his supporters argued that the cancellation of his citizenship contradicted Ukrainian and international law, the Ukrainian constitution, and due process, which is denied by Ukrainian authorities. Ukrainian authorities claimed that the cancellation of his citizenship was legal because Saakashvili had submitted incorrect data when he applied for it.
Saakashvili broke back into Ukraine through the Polish border in September. This was recognized as an administrative offense by a Ukrainian court, although Saakashvili denies breaking the law.
Saakashvili was deported from Ukraine to Poland without a court warrant in February after organizing protests against Poroshenko.
Saakashvili’s detention and expulsion violated numerous laws, lawyers for Saakashvili and independent attorneys said. The authorities deny accusations of wrongdoing, claiming that Saakashvili’s deportation was legal.
In October and November, seven Georgian associates of Saakashvili were deported to Georgia by Ukrainian authorities without court warrants, with the Georgians claiming they had been kidnapped and beaten. Under Ukrainian law, forced deportation is only possible if authorized by a court.
In March and May, Ukrainian courts canceled the decision to expel one of them, Mikheil Abzianidze, as unlawful. However, Ukrainian authorities still refused to allow him to enter Ukraine.
