TBILISI, October 10. /TASS/. Several hundreds of supporters of Georgia’s ex-President Mikhail Saakashvili gathered near the parliamentary building in Tbilisi to demand his release from prison, a TASS correspondent reported from the site on Sunday.
"We demand Saakashvili’s release. Lets us first conduct a court reform, do away with corruption and then try people," Tamar Charkviani, the leader of the Law and Justice party and the founder of a movement in support of Saakashvili’s return to the home country, told journalists before the rally.
Taking part in the rally are Georgian emigrants who, according to the organizers, arrived from Germany, Spain, Italy, the United States, and other countries. The demonstrators say they will continue rallies until Saakashvili is ultimately released.
Saakashvili was detained in Georgia on October 1 after he posted a video on his Facebook account, where he claimed he had arrived in the Georgian port city of Batumi. Later, the prosecutor’s office said that it had opened a criminal case against Saakashvili on charges of illegal state border crossing. The former president was placed in a prison in the city of Rustavi, near Tbilisi.
Saakashvili was Georgia’s president from January 2004 to November 2013 and left the country several days before the expiration of his office term. Immediately after it, four criminal cases were initiated against him and verdicts were pronounced on two of them. Thus, Saakashvili was sentenced in absentia to three years behind bars on charges of the murder of banker Sandro Girgvliani and to six years in jail on charged of the assault and battery of lawmaker Valery Gelashvili.
In the recent time, Saakashvili, who holds a Ukrainian passport, has been living in Ukraine.