Georgia summons ex-president Saakashvili for questioning, threatens intl arrest warrant ― RT News
The Prosecutor General's Office of Georgia intends to question former president Mikhail Saakashvili as a witness in a number of criminal cases. After resigning Saakashvili left Georgia last November and currently lives and lectures in the US.
Saakashvili has been summoned to come to the prosecutor’s office in Tbilisi next Thursday, on March 27, at 10 AM local time (6 AM GMT).
“As investigations of a number of criminal cases have entered a terminal stage, the prosecutor's office is facing the necessity to question Mikhail Saakashvili as a witness in these cases,” a statement from the prosecutor's office said on Saturday. No comments from Saakashvili’s representative have been available so far.
Georgian prosecutors summon ex-president Saakashvili for questioning | Reuters
The Georgian prosecutor's office has summoned former president Mikheil Saakashvili for questioning about the poisoning death of a former prime minister and other cases amid a wave of charges and verdicts against former officials.
He will also be questioned on alleged government misspending, a raid on a Tbilisi television station and a presidential pardon for four murder convicts during his two terms in office from 2004 to 2013, prosecutor Koka Katsitadze told a news conference on Saturday
After mentioning the death of former prime minister Zurab Zhvania and several corruption cases, Katsitadze told journalists: "We need to question Saakashvili ... as a witness in connection with these other cases as well."
Zhvania died in February 2005 from toxic fumes said to have come from a faulty heater. On Friday, prosecutors arrested one of his bodyguards and the pathologist who performed the autopsy on Zhvania and charged them with neglect of official duty.
Katsitadze said Saakashvili, who is not currently in Georgia, should appear at the prosecutor's office on March 27.
When asked by Georgian journalists in Brussels earlier this week if he would return home if summoned by prosecutors, Saakashvili said: "I am not participating in dirty intrigues."
Saakashvili's close ally, former prime minister Vano Merabishvili, was sentenced last month to five years in prison for corruption and four and one half years for misuse of power in breaking up a protest rally in Tbilisi in May 2011.
