You're reading: Protesters claim Lutsenko attacked their tent with axe

Activists of ex-Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili’s Movement of New Forces have accused Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko of attacking their protest tent in front of his house with an axe during the night of Feb. 26.

Lutsenko lives in the village of Stoyanka west of Kyiv.

Saakashvili’s lawyer Pavlo Bogomazov told the Kyiv Post that Lutsenko had broken the tent’s electric power generator with an axe and shouted at the protesters, telling them to get away from his house. He was accompanied by two security guards, Bogomazov said.

Bogomazov said he and the protesters had called the police and filed a report on the alleged attack.

Lutsenko’s spokespeople Larysa Sargan and Oleksandr Cherevko did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

The permanent tent in front of Lutsenko’s house was set up on Feb. 24 to demand the release of Severion Dangadze, a top official of Saakashvili’s party.

Lutsenko has accused Saakashvili and Dangadze of accepting funding from Serhiy Kurchenko, an ally of ex-President Viktor Yanukovych, to finance anti-government demonstrations and plot a coup d’etat. Saakashvili believes the case to be fabricated and political.

Dangadze is currently under arrest, while Saakashvili was deported from Ukraine to Poland without a court warrant on Feb. 12. Under Ukrainian law, forced deportation is only possible if authorized by a court.

Saakashvili’s detention and expulsion violated numerous laws, lawyers for Saakashvili and independent attorneys said. The authorities deny accusations of wrongdoing, claiming that Saakashvili’s deportation was legal.

The Kyiv Court of Appeal on Feb. 27 upheld a decision to extend Dangadze’s pre-trial detention until March 31.