Former President Mikheil Saakashvili announces new hunger strike in prison

The former president of Georgia, Mikheil Saakashvili, now leader of the opposition, announced on Monday that he was starting a new hunger strike to protest against his prison conditions, after the one carried out last year. last for 50 days. “I am starting a hunger strike,” Saakashvili told a Tbilisi court, asking to receive “adequate medical care” in prison. The former leader of this Caucasian country has been imprisoned since October following a conviction for abuse of power which he describes as political.

A charismatic figure

A pro-Western president from 2004 to 2013 and now considered the leader of the opposition, returned to Georgia on October 1 after an eight-year exile. Immediately arrested, he was imprisoned on a conviction for “abuse of power”, which he considers purely political. A charismatic and ambivalent figure in Georgian, but also Ukrainian politics, Mikheil Saakashvili has since been on a hunger strike to protest against his imprisonment. His supporters have been demanding his release or at least his hospitalization in a civilian facility for weeks.