On Saturday, around 3,000 Georgians rallied in support of imprisoned former president Mikhail Saakashvili outside the prison where he is reportedly on a hunger strike.
According to Georgia’s state security service, the protests were part of a plot devised and directed by Saakashvili.
The scene was set for a potentially tense standoff between security forces and opposition supporters, but the rally outside the prison in Rustavi, southeast of Tbilisi, was mostly peaceful.
‘The protest organisers intend to block government buildings,’ a state security spokesman told Russia’s TASS news agency.
According to his lawyers, Saakashvili, who is 53 years old, has been on a hunger strike in prison for more than a month, but Georgia’s prison service on Saturday released video footage from early November that appeared to show Saakashvili eating from a small cup with a spoon.
Saakashvili, who received a blood transfusion in late October, said that the prison doctors had prescribed a liquid solution for medical reasons.
The Georgian Public Defender, or human rights ombudsman, who visited Saakashvili in prison on Saturday refuted the prison service’s claims and backed up Saakashvili’s version of events.
After being convicted in absentia for abuse of power and concealing evidence while president in 2018, Saakashvili now faces a six-year sentence, which he dismisses as politically motivated.
In 2003, Saakashvili led the Rose Revolution, which saw veteran leader Eduard Shevardnadze deposed. Saakashvili was President of Georgia from 2004 to 2013, after which he left to pursue a new political career in Ukraine.
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