(Tbilisi) The former president of Georgia Mikheil Saakashvili, whose health has been weakened by two hunger strikes in prison, risks death if he does not receive appropriate treatment, doctors warned on Friday.
Posted at 7:20 a.m.
Aged 54, Mr. Saakashvili refused food for the first time for 50 days, then for 20 days, in order to denounce his imprisonment following a conviction for abuse of power which he denounces as political.
On Friday, a group of independent doctors who examined Mr. Saakashvili in prison indicated that the latter suffered in particular from Wernicke’s encephalopathy, a severe neurological disorder, anorexia and post-traumatic stress.
If the ex-president is not urgently transferred to a hospital where he will no longer be subject to “stress factors”, then he risks, according to doctors, developing neurological complications which can cause the dysfunction of several organs and lead to a “fatal outcome”.
The Georgian authorities have so far dismissed the concerns expressed by doctors and the supporters of the pro-Western ex-president.
The leader of the ruling Georgian Dream party, Irakli Kobakhidze, said this week that Mr Saakashvili “is not happy with the drop in his standard of living since he has been imprisoned”.
“He just needs to eat a few eggs and some cream cheese and everything will be fine,” he added.
Mr. Saakashvili, who led Georgia from 2004 to 2013, was arrested and then imprisoned in October 2021 upon his return to this Caucasian country after an exile of several years.
Mr Saakashvili’s arrest has exacerbated a political crisis in Georgia that erupted after parliamentary elections in 2020, which the ruling party narrowly won and which the opposition deemed fraudulent.