Former Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili, who is presently serving his jail sentence, accused the Justice Ministry of ‘deliberately fabricating’ court decisions.
Saakashvili made the statement in response to the Justice Ministry’s announcement that the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) had decided to strike his application about ill-treatment by the Georgian penitentiary system off its list of cases.
According to the former President, the Justice Ministry ‘deliberately manipulated with incorrect interpretations,’ and this action sought to ‘discredit’ the European Court in the eyes of Georgian society.
” I would like to say that it is categorically unacceptable and inadmissible to instrumentalise the Strasbourg Court to create incorrect opinions in the society,” he added.
On Friday, Deputy Justice Minister Beka Dzamashvili claimed the ECHR had found no “special circumstances” in Saakashvili’s plea pertaining to human rights respect, which would have prompted the body to continue its investigation.
Moreover, in his plea, the former President argued that he had been mistreated in the Georgian penitentiary system since his imprisonment last year.
On October 1, Saakashvili was apprehended in Tbilisi after his clandestine return to Georgia. He had been found guilty of misuse of power in two cases in absentia in 2018 and faced further charges, including embezzlement, illegal seizure of property and unlawful rally dispersal and illegal border crossing.
