Mikheil Saakashvili, president of Georgia from 2004-13, has been found guilty of illegally crossing the Georgian border in September 2021 and sentenced to four years and six months in jail by the Tbilisi City Court. 

Jinjolia said that the verdict would add an additional 3.5 years to Saakashvili’s total sentence, noting that multiple sentences would run concurrently, extending the former president’s total imprisonment to 2034.

Judge Mikheil Jinjolia’s ruling comes just days after the ex-head of state received a nine-year sentence, his most severe yet, for the embezzlement of GEL9mn (then $5.4mn) of state funds during his tenure.

In another case, in 2018 Saakashvili was convicted in absentia of abuse of power, charges he denies and claims are politically motivated.

The ex-president was arrested and jailed on his secret return to Georgia from Ukraine in September 2021 and has since been serving a six-year sentence, much of which he has spent in a prison hospital receiving treatment for health complications following a long hunger strike.

Saakashvili did not attend either the March 17 or March 12 court cases, either in person or remotely from the Vivamedi clinic where he is serving his sentence. 

According to InterpressNews, four other individuals — Elguja Tsomaia, Zurab and Shalva Tsotsorias and Giorgi Narimanidze — have been charged for aiding Saakashvili’s crossing illegal border crossing and for covering up the crime. All have been released on bail.

Saakashvili replaced Georgia’s Soviet-era leader Eduard Shevardnadze as president in 2004 following the bloodless Rose Revolution.

While Saakashvili’s first term was characterised by Georgia’s successful orientation towards the West and a wave of ambitious public sector reforms, a short but bloody war lost to Russia in 2008, alongside allegations of police brutality, increasingly authoritarianism, corruption, and mistreatment of male inmates, marred the latter part of his tenure.