Tbilisi Court of Appeals finds Georgian ex-President Saakashvili guilty
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Tbilisi Court of Appeals did not change the previous verdict delivered by Tbilisi City Court in January this year and found the third president of Georgia Mikheil Saakashvili guilty for abuse of power over the high-profile murder case of Sandro Girgvliani in 2006.
Saakashvili was sentenced to three years in prison in absentia and was deprived of the right to take any state post for one year and five months.
Saakashvili’s lawyers say that the verdict is unfair and the former president was sentenced for using his constitutional right to pardon inmates.
The judge said that the ex-president abused his official powers when he pardoned former law enforcers arrested for the Girgvliani case without the participation of the Pardon Commission.
In Georgia, the president is the only authorised person to pardon inmates but he must do so only with the consultation of the Pardon Commission.
The today’s verdict can be appealed to the Supreme Court of Georgia, which is the highest court in Georgia.
Three other cases are filed in Georgia with Saakashvili as a defendant:
- Violent dispersal of anti-government mass protests on November 7, 2007; unlawful raiding of Imedi television company by riot police; and the illegal take-over of property owned by late media tycoon Badri (Arkadi) Patarkatsishvili – all filed as one criminal case.
- Exceeding official powers using violence or a weapon and organizing intentional infliction of grave injury by more than one person in the case of the attack on Valeri Gelashvili.
- Appropriation or embezzlement of budget money in large quantities (more than 8.8 million GEL) with a prior agreement by a group in the case of Special State Protection Service expenses.
Saakashvili served as Georgia’s third president from 2004-2007 and again from 2008-2013.
Tbilisi City Court has delivered a guilty verdict against former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili this morning. The court found Saakashvili guilty of abuse of power when pardoning people arrested for the 2006 case of the murder of Sandro Girgvliani.
A court in the Ukrainian city of Lviv has fined Georgia’s ex-President Mikheil Saakashvili for illegally crossing the border between Poland and Ukraine.
Saakashvili, who was stripped of Ukrainian citizenship back in July, entered Ukraine via Poland by train on September 10.
Tbilisi City Court has sentenced former President of Georgia Mikheil Saakashvili to six years in prison in absentia for exceeding official powers, violence and deliberate damage to health over the high profile violence case against opposition lawmaker Valeri Gelashvili.
Criminal charges have been strengthened against the country’s former President Mikheil Saakashvili for organising a physical attack on Valeri Gelashvili in 2005, which left the opposition Member of Parliament with life-threatening injuries.
The Georgian Chief Prosecutor’s Office announced today that they have recordings which prove that the previous, United National Movement leadership was plotting to kill Georgian billionaire Badri Patarkatsishvili, who was found dead at his Surrey mansion in England on 12 February 2008.
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Tbilisi City Court has delivered a verdict which says that former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, ex-Interior Minister Ivane Merabishvili, ex-Interior Ministry official Erekle Kodua, the Georgian Interior and Finance Ministries must pay $75,000 in moral and psychological compensation to Valeri Gelashvili, a former opposition MP who was brutally beaten in 2005, under the rule of the United National Movement.
Overall six criminal charges are filed against recently arrested Georgian ex-president Mikheil Saakashvili who has been convicted to six years of imprisonment in two cases while four other criminal cases are still being heard in Tbilisi City Court.