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MEP Glucksmann announces “mobilisation” in EP for ex-pres. Saakashvili’s transfer to European clinic

French MEP Raphaël Glucksmann on Friday tweeted his colleagues in the body were planning meetings to allow the transfer of convicted former Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili to an European clinic for treatment, in a bid to prevent his death in “silence”. 

 

Saying Saakashvili was “ absolutely right” as the president of Georgia between 2004 and 2013 when he was warning the international community of the threats coming from Russia [in the wake of the Russia-Georgia 2008 war], the MEP said the former president had confronted the “blindness, deafness and compromises of our governments”. 

 

Glucksmann claimed “completely unrealistic real politics”of Western democracies at that time agreed to break up Georgia in 2008, when Russian troops invaded the country. 

 

“They refused to listen to the alarms coming from Tbilisi. They called Saakashvili crazy when he said [Russian president Vladimir] Putin would not stop in the Caucasus and attack Ukraine, and that he [Putin] was threatening the idea of Europe”, said the MEP. 

 

“I was in Georgia at that time and I remember how alone we felt there. We had to ask for the smallest gesture of solidarity and the smallest support, in contrast with gas contracts and the barbed wire of a dormant conscience”, he noted. 

 

The MEP said “today we know Saakashvili was right and our then leaders were wrong. Today we wonder how we could have been so naive and cowardly for so long. Today we claim that we have changed our minds and the situation has changed. But today the man who knocked on our closed doors faces death behind bars. [He is a] personal hostage of oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili, a shadow ruler, having accumulated his wealth in Russia and never severed ties with the country”. 

 

Glucksmann cited American doctors – who had examined Saakashvili’s hair and nail samples – as saying that the former president was poisoned with arsenic and mercury.  

 

“The Georgian government, which is trying to at least outwardly maintain its position as a balancing act between Brussels and Moscow, will not be able to resist the strong and coordinated pressure of Europe. In particular, Paris may have influence because the current president of Georgia is French [a French-born Georgian] and the oligarch who controls the country [in reference to Ivanishvili] also has a French passport”, said the MEP. 

 

A trial hearing, which was expected to grant Saakashvili’s release on medical grounds on Friday, has been postponed until Wednesday. 

 

Saakashvili, a citizen of Ukraine, was arrested in Tbilisi in October 2021, after eight years in self-imposed political exile, just ahead of municipal elections.

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