LPR asks Belarus, Georgia for assistance in criminal case against Saakashvili

The Lugansk People’s Republic Prosecutor General’s Office has asked Georgian and Belarussian law-enforcement bodies for assistance in ascertaining the involvement of former Georgian president Mikhail Saakashvili in the shooting at people in Kiev in 2014, PGO spokeswoman Inna Semyonova said at a press briefing at the Lugansk Media Centre.

 “Georgian law-enforcement bodies are requested, in case they establish the fact of Saakashvili’s involvement in the shooting at civilians and police in Kiev’s Independence Square in February 2014, to pass this information to the LPR PGO for further investigation,” Semyonova said.

Earlier, Belarussian prosecutors had questioned “persons complicit in the massive shooting at police officers and cilviains in February 2014,” she added.

 In 2014, Georgia’s General of the Army Tristan Tsitelashvili said that the snipers who had shot at people in Kiev were ex police officers loyal to Georgia’s former president.

Alexander Goroshinsky, the lawyer for the Berkut special task force police which took part in maintining law and order in the Kiev square said that Saakahsvili had used the Georgian snipers sent to Kiev for suppressing Georgian Opposition protests, putting pressure and abducting business people. According to eye-witnesses’ accounts, the command to open fire at protesters in Kiev was issued by Mamuka Mamulashvili, an advisor to the former Georgian president.

Georgian police detained Saakashvili on October 1 after he had posted a video announcing his arrival in Batumi. The former president is currently kept in the prison of the town of Rustavi near Tbilisi. Saakashvili was president of Georgia from January 2004 to November 2013. He left the country a few days before the end of his tenure.

Saakashvili was granted Ukrainian citizenship and in 2015-2016, he was chairman of the Odessa regional state administration. Later on, he was stripped of citizenship and left the country. In May 2019, Ukrainian president Vladimir Zelensky restored the Ukrainian citizenship to Saakashvili. *i*t