Former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili was hospitalized last year after a 50-day hunger strike to protest his imprisonment, which human rights groups denounced as politically motivated. Now it turns out that he was poisoned and is in a serious condition
The former president of Georgia, Mikheil Saakashvili, who is in prison, has been poisoned with heavy metals and is in danger of dying if he does not receive the proper treatment, according to a medical report released on December 5 by his legal team. The 54-year-old man, Transferred to hospital last year after a 50-day hunger strike to protest his imprisonment, which human rights groups condemned as “politically motivated”.
In a report distributed by Saakashvili’s legal team, American medical expert David Smith said that “tests revealed the presence of heavy metals” in Saakashvili’s body and the pathological symptoms he presents are the result of heavy metal poisoning. “With a reasonable degree of medical certainty the toxic substances, including mercury and arsenic, were put into his body after Saakashvili was imprisoned,” Smith told the media.
The authors of the report, dated November 28, claimed that Saakashvili was given a harmful drug without proper supervision. “The increased risk of mortality is imminent without adequate treatment, which does not seem good,” Smith added. Georgian authorities insisted that Saakashvili receive adequate medical care.
Tengiz Tsoladze, a doctor in Georgia, said that Saakashvili “has lost more than 40 kilograms since his arrest,” and that “Georgia’s medical system has apparently exhausted all available means to treat Saakashvili.”
Saakashvili, the founder of Georgia’s main opposition party and the nation’s president from 2004 to 2013, was convicted in absentia of abuse of office charges and sentenced to six years in prison in 2018. He was imprisoned in October 2021, days after he secretly returned from exile in Ukraine.
Last October, a human rights organization of the Council of Europe called for “the release of political prisoners opposed to Putin in the Russian Federation and other countries, including Mikheil Saakashvili.”