Former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, who is serving a prison term in a hospital, said Wednesday that he went on a hunger strike because he was unable to attend hearings on his request for release due to health reasons.
Agence France Presse quotes lawyer Ditto Sadzaglishvili as saying that “Mikhail Saakashvili started a hunger strike to demand permission to participate in meetings via video link” from the hospital where he has been receiving treatment under heavy security for several months. .
And last week, Saakashvili’s legal team released a medical report saying the former Georgian president was “poisoned” with heavy metals in a prison in Georgia and faces death if not treated properly, as is Saakashvili, 54, who also is the leader of the opposition in Georgia. Last year, he was transferred to the hospital after a fifty-day hunger strike to protest his imprisonment on charges of influence peddling, a charge he claims is political.
And his lawyers released a report in which American toxicologist David Smith confirmed that “tests revealed the presence of traces of heavy metals” in the body of the former president, and his symptoms were “the result of heavy metal poisoning.”
The authors of this November 28 report note that Saakashvili is undergoing a course of treatment that, if not properly supervised, could be harmful.
Saakashvili’s lawyers also asked the court to release him for health reasons, but today, Wednesday, the court session, which was supposed to consider this petition, was postponed due to the fact that the authorities could not organize a video meeting with the hospital.
It should be noted that Saakashvili He served as the country’s president between 2004 and 2013 and was imprisoned in October 2021, a few days after his return from exile, where he lived for years while he was pursued by the Georgian judiciary.
Source: AFP
