Ambassador David J. Smith: free Misha, democratic states don’t hurl ex-presidents into prison

Ambassador David J. Smith, who had served as the US Member of the International Security Advisory Board for Georgia and as an adviser to the National Security Council of Georgia and the Ministry of Defence of the country in early 2000s, says that arrested former president Mikheil Saakashvili ‘must be released from prison’. 

 

“If there were things to be investigated and prosecuted, then this should have been carried out in a forthright manner in strict accordance with the rule of law. Democratic countries do not hurl former presidents into prison,” Smith says in his recent story ‘Free Saakashvili Now.’ 
Smith says that Saakashvili had taken genuine steps, while serving his two terms in office, to transform Georgia from a soviet state into a democratic country.

 

He stated that Saakashvili’s death in prison due to the hunger strike he began a month ago, will affect Georgian interests. 

 

“Beyond the obvious human tragedy, his death may explode into a political crisis of global proportions—Georgia’s current government risks having a political prisoner die at its hands,” Smith says. 

 

He states that ‘there is only one way out’ from the situation and the way is that Saakashvili ‘must be released from prison’ and moved to a high-tech hospital immediately. 

 

“His Georgian citizenship must be restored forthwith. And national elections, now scheduled for 2024, must be advanced. Only Georgians can decide how to govern their country,” Smith says. 

 

Saakashvili, who is a citizen of Ukraine and currently chairs the Executive Committee of  the Ukrainian National Reforms Council, was arrested in Tbilisi on October 1, a day before Georgian municipal elections. 

 

He says he returned to the country after eight years in political exile, ‘to save the country’ from the ‘pro-Russian rule’ of the Georgian Dream government. 

 

In 2018, the Tbilisi City Court twice tried Saakashvili in absentia and sentenced him to six years in prison for abuse of power.