The pro-Western opposition figure has been in detention since October 2021.
Georgia’s former President Mikheil Saakashvili was sentenced to nine years in prison after being found guilty in an embezzlement case, local media reported Wednesday.
Opposition figurehead Saakashvili was first charged in absentia in 2014 of abuse of power and has been in detention since October 2021 after he returned to his homeland — where the government has lurched toward Russia in recent years — from self-imposed exile in Ukraine.
He denies the charges, saying they are politically motivated. Widespread reports have covered his declining health, with Saakashvili spending much of his sentence in a prison hospital.
In total, Saakashvili faces five charges, two of which are still in progress; including a charge of illegally crossing the border into Georgia.
The European Court of Human Rights last year ruled that Georgia’s pro-Russian authorities had acted correctly with Saakashvili’s case, which it said had been handled in keeping with European standards — refuting the ex-president’s claim that his prosecution was politically motivated.
Saakashvili was president of Georgia from 2004 to 2013, during which he pushed a pro-Western agenda and clashed with Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin, who invaded Georgia in 2008. Around a fifth of Georgia’s territory, in the disputed territories of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, is occupied by Russian armed forces and the separatist regimes it supports.
The ruling Georgian Dream party initially held a pro-Western agenda when it came to power in 2012, but made a foreign policy U-turn after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
The country also saw its application to join the EU suspended in July 2024 amid warnings of backsliding on human rights.
Dato Parulava contributed to this report.
