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Posted On

08
December
2021

Saakashvili allowed to watch TV, continuing therapy – lawyer

TBILISI. Dec 8 (Interfax) – Former Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili has stopped the protest he began on Tuesday evening and resumed therapy at the military hospital in Gori, lawyer Dimitri Sadzaglishvili told reporters on Wednesday.

"Mikheil Saakashvili started his protest after representatives of the Penitentiary Service told him yesterday that he would face disciplinary action at the Gori hospital for breaking a cheap plastic bit of a device at the prison infirmary in November: he wouldn’t be allowed to watch television and visitations would be limited. The Penitentiary Service turned on the TV in the ward after strong protest from Saakashvili," the lawyer said.

The actions taken by the Justice Ministry and the Penitentiary Service in regard to Saakashvili can be viewed as "a continuation of his inhumane treatment," he said.

Saakashvili, former Georgian president and currently a citizen of Ukraine, secretly arrived in Georgia on September 29 and was detained in Tbilisi on October 1. He was placed in jail in the city of Rustavi soon afterward, where he declared a hunger strike. On November 8, he was transferred to the prison infirmary in Tbilisi’s Gldani district without the consent of his lawyers or family. On November 20, Saakashvili was transferred to a military hospital in Gori.

Saakashvili has been convicted in Georgia in absentia in several criminal cases and is being treated as a suspect in some others. He has described his detention as unlawful and the charges brought against him as falsified.