Tbilisi [Georgia], March 18: Georgia's former president Mikheil Saakashvili, imprisoned since 2021, has been sentenced to four and a half extra years in jail for illegally entering the country.
The 57-year-old was also convicted of embezzlement last week and given a nine-year term in proceedings which he and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky condemned as politically motivated. The city court in Tbilisi said on Monday it was considered proven that Saakashvili had secretly crossed the border in 2021, bringing his total number of convictions to four.
Saakashvili, who was a pro-Western president for the United National Movement from 2004 to 2013, had already been sentenced in 2018 to two prison terms while he was living abroad - including for abuse of office.
His return to Georgia in 2021 has now led to the new conviction. A case against him for the violent dispersal of opposition protests in 2007 is still pending, in which he also faces five to eight years in prison. (DPA)
Source: Qatar Tribune
