Georgian Parliament Speaker Announces President's Intention To Pardon Saakashvili

The former president of Georgia has been in pretrial detention since 2021.

Georgian President Salome Zurabishvili may pardon former head of state Mikheil Saakashvili, who is in prison, said the speaker of the country's parliament, Shalva Papuashvili, according to Resonance Daily.

“It is thanks to Mikheil Saakashvili that Salome Zurabishvili remained in office. <...> When they deem it necessary <...> Zurabishvili will issue an act of pardon,” Papuashvili said.

He recalled the president's pardon of the founder of the opposition TV channel Mtavari Arkhi and former CEO of the Rustavi 2 TV company Nikoloz Gvaramia.

Under Saakashvili, Gvaramia was the Minister of Justice and Education. He acted as the ex-president's lawyer after his return to Georgia from Ukraine in 2021, when Saakashvili was taken into custody.

Papuashvili said that it would be “no problem” for Zurabishvili to pardon Saakashvili as well. In the case of Gvaramia, he claims, the president made the decision to pardon under pressure from outside, including the EU.

Saakashvili led Georgia from 2004 to 2013, and then left the country. He was stripped of his citizenship. Saakashvili then received Ukrainian citizenship.

In 2015-2016, he worked in the Odesa administration, but in 2017, then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko stripped him of his citizenship. The new Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky re-gained Saakashvili's citizenship in 2019.

In the autumn of 2021, Saakashvili returned to Georgia shortly before the municipal elections and called on citizens to protest. The politician was detained and sent to a pretrial detention center, and a new charge was brought against him — for illegally crossing the border.

Saakashvili considered his detention illegal and the charges against him falsified. After his detention, he went on hunger strike several times, and his health was reported to be deteriorating. In 2023, a court in Tbilisi refused to release Saakashvili from custody due to health reasons.

Saakashvili's detention negatively affected relations between Georgia and Ukraine.

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