Georgian media outlet Imedi TV reports that MEP Raphael Glucksmann, who states that Georgian former president Mikheil Saakashvili is a political prisoner, is closely connected with the ex-president who was detained in Tbilisi on October 1, after eight years in political exile. 

Imedi TV says that Glucksmann was appointed as Saakashvili’s advisor back in 2005, two years after the Rose Revolution, and had been actively involved in Georgian politics until 2012, when Saakashvili’s United National Movement (UNM) was defeated by the Georgian Dream coalition in parliamentary elections. 

“He was one of Saakashvili's trusted persons and, accordingly, his sentiments towards the former president are no surprise,” says the channel. 

The author of the TV report says that even in 2012 Glucksmann gave an interview to Independent in which he claimed that the founder of the Georgian Dream ruling party, Bidzina Ivanishvili, was Russia’s man ‘without providing any evidence,’ mostly based on own suspicion.’ 

The channel says that the name of the current head of the European Parliament’s committee fighting against disinformation (Glucksmann) is also linked with several high-profile cases in Georgia. 

“For instance, at that time when Imedi TV was under the full control of the United National Movement, the idea of imitated Kronika (one of the information shows of Imedi in which fake information was released which panicked people back in 2010) belonged to Glucksmann to make the channel ‘more provocative.’ 

The author also says that Saakashvili, who is charged with embezzlement of state funds, was also spending much on Glucksmann ‘for his service.’ 

Political expert Mamuka Areshidze says that Glucksmann’s efforts to portray Saakashvili as a ‘victim’ or  ‘politically persecuted’ is weak. 

“Glucksmann was not only Saakashvili’s advisor, but also his friend,” Areshidze said. 

The ruling Georgian Dream party MPs are not surprised by Glucksmann’s ‘biased messages, under the status of an unbiased MEP.’ 

 “Along with working on a concrete state post and taking a high salary for this, Glucksmann was also a husband of one of high-ranking officials under the UNM. Thus, in this situation it is a complicated task for him to reveal himself as an unbiased person and is trying to invent the arguments which will create such an illusion,” ruling party MP Mikheil Sarjveladze says. 

Fellow GD MP Giorgi Amilakhvari has advised Glucksmann to arrive in Georgia and stand by thousands of people who were victims of the UNM government, rather than defending Saakashvili. 

He says that what Glucksmann says ‘is a biased position of a single individual and not a view of the EU or Georgia’s foreign partners.’