Ukrainian MP Arakhamia vows to appeal Prosecutor General to investigate “attempted murder” of Saakashvili

David Arakhamia, an Ukrainian MP of Georgian origin, on Tuesday pledged he and his colleagues would address the country’s Prosecutor General’s Office to investigate an “attempted murder” of Mikheil Saakashvili, the currently imprisoned third President of Georgia, who now holds Ukrainian citizenship. 

 

In his comments at the founding event of the International Movement of Support for Saakashvili, Arakhamia, whom the Georgian Dream Government has accused of affiliation with the former President’s “radical” United National Movement party and attempts to “drag” Georgia into the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict, Arakhamia said after the pardon of former UNM official and TV figure Nika Gvaramia by President Salome Zourabichvili earlier this month, now it was “Saakashvili’s turm”. 

 

He claimed the Georgian Dream authorities were “afraid of the political competition” Saakashvili’s release could create for the next year’s Parliamentary elections. 

 

“Kyiv has repeatedly offered them [the Georgian Government] a dialogue, but now it is no longer about politics, now the issue is about saving a life  [of Saakashvili], who is actually dying in prison, and the Georgian authorities are 100 percent  responsible for this”, he said, claiming what the Georgian Government was doing in relation to the former official, was an “attempted murder”. 

 

The Georgian Governmnet has said the May ruling by the European Court of Human Rights, which rejected Saakashvili’s transfer to a foreign state on health grounds, had “put an end to his fake campaign” on alleged ill-treatemnet and torture while in custody. 

 

They claimed Saakashvili had been engaged in “self-harm” since his arrest in Tbilisi in October 2021, after eight years abroad, to facilitate his “illegal release” from prison. 

 

Saakashvili is currently serving his six-year-term for abuse of power while in office, while three other cases involving him are still pending.