Saakashvili: 'I was effectively sentenced to death in prison.' Georgia's third president jailed for 12 years
Saakashvili jailed for 12 years
Mikheil Saakashvili has been sentenced to 4 years and 6 months in prison for illegally crossing the Georgian border. The verdict was delivered by Judge Mikheil Jinjolia, who applied the principle of cumulative sentencing.
This sentence was added to the 9-year prison term Saakashvili received on March 12, 2025, for embezzling state funds. In total, the former Georgian president has been sentenced to 12 years and 6 months behind bars.
Additionally, Saakashvili has been barred from holding public office for three years after serving his sentence.
The investigation into Mikheil Saakashvili’s illegal border crossing began on October 1, 2021, with Georgia’s third president charged under Article 344 of the Criminal Code.
Four other individuals—Elguja Tsomaya, Zurab and Shalva Tsotsori, and Giorgi Narimanidze—have also been charged in the same case but were released on bail, with their cases being handled separately.
On March 12, Tbilisi City Court Judge Badri Kochlamazashvili sentenced Saakashvili to nine years in prison for embezzling state funds.
Reacting to the verdict, Saakashvili claimed that the decision would effectively lead to his death:
“I want to respond to this series of bloody, illegal, and shameful rulings issued by Ivanishvili’s Russian factory of injustice. I have effectively been sentenced to death in prison. […] They are destroying a man who wanted everything for Georgia.
Destroy me as much as you want—you cannot kill the idea of freedom in Georgia. You cannot kill the soul of Saakashvili,” the former president declared.
Other cases against Saakashvili
On January 5, 2018, Judge Giorgi Arevadze found former President Mikheil Saakashvili guilty in a case related to the pardoning of Georgian Interior Ministry officers convicted of murdering Sandro Girgvliani, an employee of United Georgian Bank, in January 2006.
According to the prosecution, weeks after the murder, President Saakashvili promised the head of the Constitutional Security Department, Davit Akhalaia, that he would pardon those officers who agreed to take responsibility for the killing while shielding the actual masterminds and high-ranking perpetrators.
Saakashvili was sentenced in absentia to three years in prison, marking the first conviction against him in a Georgian court.
The court also found Saakashvili guilty of orchestrating an attack on businessman Valeri Gelashvili under Article 333, Part 3, Subparagraph “b” of the Georgian Criminal Code (abuse of office with the use of violence and weapons), as well as under Article 117, Part 5, Subparagraph “d” (intentional infliction of grievous bodily harm by a group). He was sentenced in absentia to six additional years in prison for this case.
On October 1, 2021, Saakashvili returned to Georgia from Ukraine. Shortly after, the Interior Ministry released a statement claiming that he had never crossed the Georgian border, with members of the ruling Georgian Dream party also insisting that he had not left Ukraine. However, on the same day, he was arrested in Tbilisi.
