Hunger-striking ex-leader Mikheil Saakashvili rattles Georgia from jail
Prison wardens pulled him out of sight, but not before he was pictured smiling and making a heart sign with his hands. Even from behind bars, he continues to make headlines. Saakashvili made a surprise return to Georgia after eight years in exile on the eve of local elections.
He was arrested on 1 October, wanted for his conviction in absentia of abuses of power. "Why did I give up my freedom, and my life as a Ukrainian government official, to become a prisoner of conscience in my homeland?" he wrote on the 17th day of his hunger strike.
"I couldn't watch from afar while the country I worked so hard to build, from a failed post-Soviet state to a nascent Western democracy and staunch US ally, drifted back into Russia's orbit." His lawyers and doctors say his health is deteriorating, while the Georgian Dream government claims this saga is a well-timed piece of political theatre.
Irakli Kobakhidze, Chairman of the governing party, has called Saakashvili's hunger-strike "a mock chronicle" ahead of Saturday's mayoral run-off elections for control of five of the country's major cities. Dismissing the former president as just "an ordinary prisoner", he said it was nothing but a show: "I assure you, as soon as the elections are over, Saakashvili will no longer be on the agenda."
But the former president's lawyers insist the government is making every effort to silence him, including painting over the windows of his cell and making it difficult for him to pass messages to the outside world. On Wednesday, a member of Saakashvili's legal team was refused entry at Tbilisi International Airport."I experienced Georgian hospitality first hand," Ukrainian lawyer Evgen Grushovets complained.
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