TBILISI, August 03 /ITAR-TASS/. Georgia’s former president, Mikhail Saakashvili, will not seek asylum in any country because there is no need for him to do that. In an interview with the Tbilisi-based Rustavi-2 television company, Saakashvili described the power abuse accusations against him as groundless. He hopes the Saturday ruling of the Tbiliisi city court on preliminary confinement, passed in absentia, will not restrict his ability of global travel.

“I have recently been to Albania. On July 30, I was in Budapest at the invitation of my friend Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. I am planning to visit some other countries soon,” Saakashvili who is currently staying in New York said. He added that Georgia and Russia were the only two countries which he could not visit for the moment.

“Saakashvili has been refusing to appear in court as a witness on many high-profile cases in recent months. Later, he even refused to be questioned on Skype. Under Georgian laws, prosecutors had the right to demand a measure of restriction for Saakashvili what the court did,” a spokesperson for the Georgian Prosecutor General’s Office said.

On July 28, the Prosecutor General’s Office brought criminal charges against Saakashvili for power abuse. It said that on November 7, 2007 Mikhail Saakashvili, who was the president of Georgia at that time, issued a criminal order to policemen to crack down on demonstrators in capital Tbilisi. As a result, hundreds of peaceful civilians were beaten up. Georgian riot police burst into the territory of the Imedi television company, beating its staff and ordinary people.

After that, Georgia’s top officials, who followed Saakashvili’s orders, started seizing property from Georgian businessman Badri Patarkatsishvili.

Mikhail Saakashvili was the president of Georgia from January 2004 to November 17, 2013. Saakashvili left Georgia in mid-November 2013, two days before his presidential term officially expired. He has been living abroad since then.