Former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili says he has returned to his home country, defying threats from police officials who had warned he could face arrest.
In a video posted on Facebook on October 1, Saakashvili said he was in the Black Sea city of Batumi. Hours earlier, he said on Facebook that he was in the country after an eight-year absence.
The claim could not be immediately confirmed. Georgia’s Interior Ministry did not immediately comment on the statement.
Saakashvili, who is currently based in Ukraine, said earlier this week that he planned to fly to Tbilisi to help “save the country” on October 2, the day local elections are held in Georgia.
“The fate of Georgia is being decided, Georgia’s survival is at stake and that’s why I took a ticket on the evening of October 2 so I can be with you and protect your [political] will with you, so I can take part in saving Georgia,” said Saakashvili on his Facebook page, where he also posted a photo of his purported plane ticket.
Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili said the police would arrest Saakashvili if he returned.
“As soon as Saakashvili steps on our soil he will be arrested and sent to prison,” the Interfax news agency cited Garibashvili as telling reporters.
In June 2018, Saakashvili was sentenced in absentia to six years in prison by a Georgian court which found him guilty of abuse of power and seeking to cover up evidence about the beating of an opposition lawmaker when he was president.
Tensions have been high in Georgia between the ruling Georgian Dream party and the opposition, which Saakashvili supports, since parliamentary elections last year which the opposition said were rigged.
International observers said at the time that the election had been competitive and that fundamental freedoms had generally been respected.
Before it annulled a political deal with the opposition brokered by the European Union, Georgian Dream agreed to call early parliamentary elections if it failed to secure at least 43 percent of the vote in the local polls.
Saakashvili served as president of Georgia in the 2000s, before being voted out of office in 2013.
In recent years, he has held several top government positions in Ukraine, and was briefly the governor of the Black Sea port of Odesa.
