Court to revise all evidence against ex-President Saakashvili
By Gvantsa Gabekhadze
Wednesday, June 24
The Tbilisi City Court allowed the revision of all evidence in court presented by the Prosecutor’s office in the case against former president Mikheil Saakashvili, the Chief Prosecutor’s Office states.
The body reveals that during the preliminary hearing of the case the petition for termination of the criminal case against Saakashvili of the defending side was not satisfied by the court, and only a portion of the evidence presented by the defending side was admitted to court. The hearing of the case in the Tbilisi City Court is scheduled for July 6, 2015.
“We would like to remind you that the discovery of new circumstances in the Sandro Gvirgvliani case and the charges against Saakashvili were carried out in accordance with the decision of the Strasbourg Human Rights European Court, within the borders of a new investigation conducted by the Georgian prosecutor’s office, which, during the execution process of the Strasbourg court decision, is supervised by the committee made up of EC ministers,” the office states.
In the above mentioned case Saakashvili is charged with ill-use of the work related authority in accordance with the Georgian Penal Code’s article 332 part 2, which considers imprisonment from 3 to 5 years.
Sandro Girgvliani’s murder case is one of the most notorious criminal cases under the previous government. Sandro Girgvliani, 28, was kidnapped and found dead in 2006 after his incident with former officials and their relatives at a Shardeni Bar.
Currently Saakashvili is in Ukraine. He was granted Ukrainian citizenship and has been appointed as the governor of Odessa.
Saakashvili and his team members from the opposition United National Movement (UNM) stress that all the charges against Saakashvili are politically grounded that affects the state interests.
The current leadership says that Saakashvili’s being in Ukraine will not strain the two country’s historical ties, but they do not hide their dissatisfaction towards Saakashvili’s political advancement in the country.
The Chief Prosecutor’s Office has appealed several times to the relevant bodies of Ukraine to extradite Saakashvili until he gained the Ukrainian citizenship but the appeals were rejected all the time.
