Georgia’s ex-president Mikhail Saakashvili says he has gone on a hunger strike again to protest against his prison conditions. He demands “appropriate medical care” as recommended by independent doctors, the opposition leader said in a court in Tbilisi on Monday. At the same time, he protested against the prison administration’s decision not to let his personal doctor visit him in prison.
Saakashvili returned to Georgia from Ukraine on October 1 after eight years in exile and was arrested shortly thereafter. He had gone without food for 50 days to protest his detention and only ended the hunger strike after being transferred to a military hospital in a life-threatening condition.
Although independent doctors diagnosed in December the 54-year-old with severe neurological disorders, which they attributed to the hunger strike and ill-treatment in detention, he was sent back to prison at the end of December.
Saakashvili has been on trial since late November for abuse of power during his presidency from 2004 to 2013. He was stripped of his Georgian citizenship in 2015, and in 2018 he was sentenced in absentia to six years in prison for abuse of office.
The pro-Western politician rejects all allegations as politically motivated. Human rights activists accuse the Georgian government of criminally prosecuting political opponents.