Emaciated and imprisoned, ex-president Saakashvili tells Georgian courtroom he’s spiritually match

TBILISI, Georgia — Georgia’s imprisoned former president Mikheil Saakashvili appeared severely emaciated on Monday in videolink testimony to a courtroom contemplating an abuse-of-power case towards him.

Saakashvili and his supporters declare he has been poisoned whereas imprisoned and that he now weighs about 60 kilograms (132 kilos), half of what he weighed when he was arrested in October 2021.

From a personal clinic the place he was being held, he instructed the courtroom that regardless of his poor well being, he was “spiritually fit and determined to serve the country,” in line with native information website Agenda.

Saakashvili, who served as Georgia’s president in 2004-13 and led the so-called Rose Revolution protests that drove the earlier president out of workplace, left for Ukraine after the top of his second time period. He was later convicted in absentia of abuse of energy and sentenced to 6 years in jail.

He was arrested in October 2021 after returning to Georgia to attempt to bolster opposition forces earlier than nationwide municipal elections.

He is now on trial on fees linked to the violent dispersal of an opposition rally in 2007.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Monday referred to as for Georgia to ship Saakashvili to Ukraine for medical therapy and stated the Georgian ambassador can be referred to as to the international ministry and inspired to depart Ukraine inside two days for consultations along with his authorities.