ODESSA, July 31. /TASS/. The press service of the Odessa regional state administration has released a report claiming that Interpol passed a decision on the inadmissibility of any prosecutions targeting the former Georgian President, Mikhail Saakashvili who is now governor of Ukraine’s vital Odessa region.
"In response to the steps taken by the (Georgian) government in Tbilisi, Interpol’s governing body in Lyons has passed a decision that any prosecution of the former President of Georgia, Mikhail Saakashvili, is inadmissible as it runs counter to Interpol’s charter, which means the presence of a clear evidence of political persecution," the state administration claimed in its report.
Relevant letters had been sent out to all the national bureaus of Interpol.
TASS did not have official comments from either the Georgian government or Interpol at the time of reporting.
On May 30, 2015, Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko appointed Saakashvili governor of Odessa and granted Ukrainian citizenship to him.
Saakashvili, who is currently charged with a number of criminal offences back at home, occupied the post of president in Georgia from January 2004 through to November 2007 and then from January 2008 through to November 2013. He left the country several days before the expiry of his term of office and inauguration of President Georgy Marvelashvili.
After departure from Georgia, he lived in the U.S. and in Ukraine and took the post of chairman of an international council for reforms in Ukraine in 2015.
In 2014, Georgian authorities charged Saakashvili with organizing the bashing of participants in a peaceful rally in Tbilisi on November 7, 2007. He was also charged with an illegal breaking into the editorial office of Imedi television channel and embezzlement of property of the businessman, Badri Patarkatsishvili.
Also, the authorities accused him of ordering an armed assault on parliament deputy Valery Gelashvili in 2005, covering up a crime, forgeries in the course of investigation of the 2006 assassination of banker Sandro Girgvliani, and misspending of state finances in the period of 2009 through 2012.
As he did not report to the investigative agencies in his home country, charges were issued to him in absentia and the judiciary appointed arrest as a pretrial measure for him.
Saakashvili was placed on a domestic wanted list and the Prosecutor General’s Office asked Interpol to place him on an international wanted list. Saakashvili himself dismisses these accusations ungrounded ones.
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