Ex-president of Georgia, leader of the New Forces Movement Mikheil Saakashvili will not come to give explanations on the extradition examination to the Kyiv prosecutor’s office on February 12, since he considers it illegal.
“We are against the extradition check and consider it illegal. Ukraine has already twice refused on extradition to Georgia on the same grounds and requests. And we have the right not to come, because we provided our official explanations and position,” Saakashvili’s lawyer Ruslan Chornolutsky told Interfax-Ukraine.
On February 9, Chornolutsky sent a letter to the Kyiv prosecutor’s office, indicating that he considers the extradition check against Saakashvili illegal.
The lawyer draws attention to the fact that in the motion of the Prosecutor General’s Office of the Ministry of Justice of Georgia, guarantees had not been provided for reviewing the judicial decisions taken against Saakashvili, which, in the light of international law, contradicts the “acceptability of such motions.”
Chornolutsky said that Saakashvili did not stay on the territory of Ukraine from July 17 to September 10, 2017 and the Georgian side did not provide proof of his stay in Ukraine during the filing of the motion “On the extradition of Saakashvili” dated September 1, 2017.
The lawyer also notes that in 2014 and 2015, the General Prosecutor’s Office of Ukraine had already conducted an extradition check on the motion of Georgian law enforcement agencies, and on March 31, 2015 decided to refuse to extradite Saakashvili to Georgia. Subsequently, according to the criminal cases specified in the motion, a decision was already made to refuse extradition, since “such cases are of the nature of political persecution”.
Chornolutsky also named the decision of the ECHR dated November 28, 2011 in the case of Merabishvili vs. Georgia as an argument. It refers to the fact that the Prosecutor General of Georgia and the head of the Penitentiary Service Administration in December 2013 inclined former Prime Minister of Georgia Vano Merabishvili, convicted in several cases, to give confessions on a number of cases, in particular, about the death of former Prime Minister of Georgia Zurab Zhvania and “offshore bank accounts of ex-Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili.”
As reported, the Kyiv prosecutor’s office summoned Saakashvili on February 12 to give explanations on the extradition verification of the circumstances that may become the basis for refusing to extradite Saakashvili to the competent bodies of Georgia for bringing to criminal responsibility.
