Georgia court slaps fresh 4.5-year prison term on Saakashvili

A Georgian court on Monday sentenced ex-president Mikheil Saakashvili to four and a half years behind bars for illegally crossing the border, bringing the pro-Western politician's total sentence to 12.5 years, AFP reported.

Saakashvili, 57, was sentenced in absentia in 2018 to six years in prison for abuse of office and, last week, he received a nine-year sentence for misspending public funds.

He began serving the term in 2021, when he returned to the country from exile.

On Monday, Saakashvili was sentenced to "four years and six months in prison for illegally crossing Georgia's border" when he covertly returned from exile in Ukraine, lawyer Dito Sadzaglishvili told AFP.

"Taking into account the combination of sentences, Mikheil Saakashvili's overall prison term is set at 12 years and six months," said Judge Mikheil Jinjolia.

Saakashvili and rights groups have denounced his prosecution as politically motivated.

He is being held in a civilian hospital, where he was transferred in 2022 after staging a 50-day hunger strike to protest over his detention.

The European Parliament has called for his immediate release, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has demanded that Saakashvili, a Ukrainian national since 2019, be transferred to Kyiv.