The Tbilisi City Court has sentenced former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili to four and a half years in prison after finding him guilty of illegal border crossing (Article 344 of the Criminal Code of the Republic). Taking into account the previous sentences, the politician will spend 12 and a half years in prison and will be released from there not earlier than April 2034.
On September 29, 2021, Saakashvili secretly returned to his homeland after eight years of absence. To do this, he hid in a lorry with dairy products on the ferry Vilnius, which was traveling from the Ukrainian Chernomorsk to the Georgian port of Poti. The politician tried to organize a political campaign against the Georgian Dream ahead of the October 2 elections and urged his supporters to go to a rally. However, on October 1, he was detained on the basis of previously opened criminal cases. So far, there are five of them. Sentences have been passed in four of them.
