Georgia ex-President Mikheil Saakashvili's prison terms now total over 12 years after latest verdict

TBILISI, Georgia (AP) — A court in Georgia on Monday handed another prison sentence to former President Mikheil Saakashvili, extending his total imprisonment to 12½ years, in a verdict that he denounced as illegal.

Saakashvili, who served as Georgia’s president from 2004-2013, had previously been sentenced on charges of abuse of power and embezzlement that he and his defense have rejected as politically motivated.

On Monday, the court sentenced him to four years and six months on charges of illegal border crossing. With his previous sentences accumulated, he now has to serve 12 years and six months behind bars.

Saakashvili, speaking by videoconference, dismissed Monday's verdict as an “absolutely illegal, unjust sentencing of me for crimes I have not committed.”

“They want to annihilate me in prison,” he said. "But no matter what, I will fight till the end.”

Saakashvili, who led the so-called Rose Revolution protests in 2003 that drove his predecessor out of office, enacted a serious of ambitious reforms tacking official corruption as president of the South Caucasus nation of 3.7 million. He also presided over a short but fierce war with Russia in 2008 that ended with the humiliating loss of its last footholds in two separatist territories, and he cracked down on protesters who charged that his zeal had mutated into autocracy.

In 2012, Saakashvili’s United National Movement party lost the election to the Georgian Dream party established by Bidzina Ivanishvili, a shadowy billionaire who made his fortune in Russia. Georgian Dream has remained in power ever since, tightening its grip on democratic freedoms and drawing accusations from the opposition of steering the country away from the path toward European Union membership and back into Russia’s sphere of influence.

Saakashvili left for Ukraine in 2013, obtained Ukrainian citizenship and served as a governor of the country’s southern Odesa region from 2015-16. He returned to Georgia in October 2021 to try to bolster opposition forces before nationwide municipal elections and was quickly arrested.

The former president spent much of his time behind bars in a prison hospital after going on a hunger strikes and later claiming that he had been poisoned. He is currently receiving medical treatment at the Vivamedi Clinic, where he is being monitored for several chronic conditions, and his health reportedly worsens periodically, according to the clinic.

Saakashvili's lawyer, Beka Basilaia, said that Monday's verdict again showed that Saakashvili is a political prisoner.

"As long as Georgian Dream remains in power, the judiciary is a farce and will make whatever decision it is instructed to,” Basilaia said.

In this photo taken from video, Georgia's jailed ex-President Mikheil Saakashvili appears on a screen via a video link from a prison during a court hearing in Tbilisi, Georgia, on Monday, March 17, 2025. (TV formula via AP)

In this photo taken from video, Georgia's jailed ex-President Mikheil Saakashvili appears on a screen via a video link from a prison during a court hearing in Tbilisi, Georgia, on Monday, March 17, 2025. (TV formula via AP)

FILE - Former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili who was convicted in absentia of abuse of power during his presidency and arrested upon his return from exile, gestures speaking from a defendant's dock during a court hearing in Tbilisi, Georgia, Thursday, Dec. 2, 2021. . (Irakli Gedenidze/Pool Photo via AP, File)

FILE - Georgia's jailed ex-President Mikheil Saakashvili appears on a screen via a video link from a clinic during a court hearing in the case of the violent dispersal of anti-government mass protests in 2007, in Tbilisi, Georgia, Friday, Oct. 27, 2023. (Irakli Gedenidze, Pool Photo via AP, File)

NEW YORK (AP) — A Columbia University student activist detained by the U.S. government over his participation in pro-Palestinian demonstrations can challenge the legality of his detention, but the case should be heard in New Jersey, rather than in New York or Louisiana, a federal judge ruled Wednesday.

Mahmoud Khalil, 30, a legal U.S. resident with no criminal record, was detained by federal immigration agents on March 8. He was held overnight at an immigration detention center in New Jersey before being moved to an immigration facility in Jenna, Louisiana.

Judge Jesse Furman in Manhattan called the legal challenge an "exceptional case" in need of "careful judicial review."

“Such judicial review is especially critical when, as here, there are colorable claims that the Executive Branch has violated the law or exercised its otherwise lawful authority in an arbitrary and discriminatory manner,” he wrote.

Furman added that “in an exceptional case, it is all the more important for a court to apply well-established principles to the facts, lest emotions or passions interfere with reasoned analysis; that is the essence of the rule of law.”

He said New Jersey was the appropriate venue because Khalil was detained there when his lawyers sued the government.

Federal authorities argued to move the case to Louisiana, saying Khalil was there because of a lack of available detention center beds in the metropolitan New York region and because of a bedbug infestation at an Elizabeth, New Jersey, lockup.

Khalil's lawyers said the transfer was a “retaliatory” action separating Khalil from his lawyers and an effort to find a jurisdiction where judges may be more favorable to the Republican administration’s unusual legal claims.

The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In a statement released by the American Civil Liberties Union, Khalil's wife, Dr. Noor Abdalla, called Furman's order a “first step.”

“His unlawful and unjust detention cannot stand. We will not stop fighting until he is home with me,” said Abdalla, a dentist and U.S. citizen who is pregnant with their first child.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has cited as grounds for Khalil’s deportation a rarely-used statute giving him sweeping power to deport those who pose “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.”

The White House has accused Khalil of “siding with terrorists,” but has yet to provide support for the claim. President Donald Trump has described Khalil’s case as the “first of many to come.”

Khalil, an international affairs graduate student, had represented student activists in negotiations with Columbia University over protests of the war in Gaza. The Trump administration is acting quickly to make an example of Columbia as it demands stronger action against allegations of anti-Jewish bias on college campuses.

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Haigh reported on this story from Norwich, Conn.

FILE - Student negotiator Mahmoud Khalil is on the Columbia University campus in New York at a pro-Palestinian protest encampment on April 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Ted Shaffrey, file)