TBILISI, November 13 – Georgia’s former president Mikheil Saakashvili has been moved out of a private clinic and back into Rustavi prison in a late night transfer which caused political controversy.
The penitentiary service and the Ministry of Health say Saakashvili no longer needs hospital care. Saakashvili, his lawyers, and his family insist that he does. They claim he still shows symptoms of poisoning and that officials returned him to prison without prior warning.
Saakashvili had been receiving treatment at the Viva Med clinic since May 2022. According to the penitentiary service, he received regular medical attention and was discharged only after doctors concluded that his condition was satisfactory. The agency says he has been returned to Prison No 12 and will continue to serve his sentence under normal procedures.
One of his lawyers, Vakho Barnabishvili, said the timing of the transfer came as a shock. He said neither the legal team nor Saakashvili himself received notice. Another lawyer, Beka Basilaya, described the move as the start of a “new phase” of political persecution. He said neither the clinic nor the penitentiary system informed anyone about the decision in advance.
Doctors at Viva Med reject the family’s claim that Saakashvili went more than a month without medical evaluation. The clinic’s clinical director, Zurab Chkhaidze, said the patient was checked daily, including by his primary physician. He said Saakashvili had no special complaints and no longer met the criteria for remaining in the hospital.
Georgia’s Minister of Health, Mikheil Sarjveladze, supported the decision, saying Saakashvili has no health problem that would prevent him from serving his sentence in prison. He said, “A person who has no health problem and must serve a sentence should indeed be in a penitentiary facility.”
Opposition parties sharply disagree. United National Movement chair Tina Bokuchava said no one had been told that a transfer was being prepared and called it a serious procedural violation. She also said the move was an attempt by Georgian Dream founder Bidzina Ivanishvili to draw attention from the West, pointing to earlier criticism of Ivanishvili in the United States Congress. Bokuchava argued that Saakashvili remains vulnerable due to the long term effects of his fifty day hunger strike and what she described as poisoning confirmed by international sources.
Other opposition figures echoed the criticism. Giorgi Sharashidze from the Gakharia for Georgia party said the government used Saakashvili’s transfer to distract from what he called “absurd” charges filed recently against former prime minister Giorgi Gakharia. Tamar Chergoleishvili, leader of the Federalists, said Saakashvili is a political prisoner and claimed that former prime minister Irakli Garibashvili would also become one.
Georgian Dream responded with a different message. MP Levan Makashvili said the state invested more care, time, and resources into Saakashvili than any prisoner should expect. He said the former president was staging “a political drama,” and his return to prison was appropriate once treatment ended.
Hours after arriving at Rustavi prison, Saakashvili sent a handwritten letter to his lawyer. In the letter, he says the same people greeted him who “poisoned” him in March 2022. He thanked the doctors at Viva Med for fighting for his life and claimed that the authorities returned him to “executioners” to frighten his supporters and send a message to the West and Ukraine. He wrote, “Why did they return me now to the executioners? Precisely because they want to intimidate my many supporters, and this is a specific message to the West and Ukraine.”
Saakashvili, who served 18 months as governor of the Odessa region, is the chairman of President Volodymyr Zelensky’s Reform Council in Ukraine. In his letter, he said Ivanishvili once promised to keep him alive but is now signaling to European and American partners that this promise no longer stands. He wrote that he believes the decision is coordinated with Moscow.
In his latest comments, Saakashvili described himself as a symbol of successful reforms and of Georgia’s freedom and statehood. His message ended with an appeal to supporters not to give up. He wrote, “Do not surrender under any circumstances and fight, because our victory is inevitable.”
