Mikheil Saakashvili's brother David spoke about the state of health of the politician after he made a speech via video link during the court session. Saakashvili is on trial in the case of dispersing a rally in 2007, when he was president of Georgia.
The footage shows that Saakashvili looks very emaciated and painfully thin. Before his arrest, he weighed 116 kilograms with a height of 195 centimeters. In February 2023, his weight was already 67 kilograms.
“This is the result of how he was treated, in what conditions he was for many months. There is a possibility that Mikhail was poisoned, this will probably be proven later by history. The situation is really not the best, the weight is terrible, I’m not ready to say exactly how many kilograms Mikhail now weighs, but the fact is that he continues to lose weight and is going to die, ”the brother commented on his condition.
Mikheil Saakashvili served as President of Georgia from 2004 to 2007 and from 2008 to 2013.
Saakashvili actively supported the Euromaidan movement and the change of power in Ukraine in 2014. In 2015, he was appointed an adviser to the President of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko, and also received Ukrainian citizenship, which was the reason for his renunciation of Georgian citizenship.
Saakashvili returned to his homeland in October 2021 and was immediately arrested, since back in 2018 a Georgian court sentenced him in absentia to six years in prison, finding him guilty of abuse of power. By May 2022, the health of the former president was so undermined that he was transferred to the hospital. Among the diagnoses made by the politician are dementia and “intoxication of the body”, he lost more than 40 kilograms.
Saakashvili himself stated that he had been poisoned, and turned to the head of the Bellingcat journalistic investigation group, Hristo Grozev, with a request to investigate the attempt on his life.