Georgia’s former president to face fresh charges for sabotage and inciting coup

The Georgian Prosecutor General has announced that jailed former president Mikheil Saakashvili and a number of opposition figures are to face fresh criminal charges including sabotage and calling for the violent overthrow of the government, Echo of the Caucasus, Radio Free Europe’s Georgian outlet, reported on Thursday.

In total, eight people are to face charges, six of whom are already in custody. The other figures facing charges include Giorgi Vashadze, leader of the pro-western party Strategy Aghmashenebeli, Nika Melia, the former head of the United National Movement party and Mamuka Khazaradze of the liberal Lelo for Georgia party.

According to the prosecutor, the opposition figures sought to radicalise protesters following the 2024 parliamentary elections, encouraging them to seize government buildings and to overthrow the regime. Some opposition figures had passed information about Georgian oil imports and the country’s military-industrial complex to foreign powers, the prosecutor continued.

One of the leaders of Georgia’s 2003 Rose Revolution, which led to the overthrow of Georgia’s then-president Eduard Shevardnadze, Saakashvili served two terms as president in 2004-2013, and has for years been a vocal critic of the ruling Georgian Dream party.

After spending seven years in self-imposed exile, Saakashvili was arrested when he returned from Ukraine to Georgia in October 2021. Since then, human rights organisations have accused the Georgian authorities of seriously endangering his health by denying him adequate medical care in prison.

Saakashvili, who had already been serving a six-year prison sentence for illegally pardoning four police officers in 2008 and ordering the beating of opposition MP Valeri Gelashvili in 2005, was sentenced to nine years in prison for embezzlement this year.