Shalva Khachapuridze, lawyer of former Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili, who has been in prison since he was arrested in 2021 after spending eight years in exile, denounced on Monday that traces of arsenic were found in a toxicological analysis carried out on the former president.
«We still do not have the results of other analyses, but the toxicological one indicates that traces of arsenic have been detected,» the lawyer said in statements to the Front News portal.
However, he said that the full results of the analysis carried out in the United States are expected to arrive later in the day, although Saakashvili is scheduled to go to court on Monday in the framework of the case against him for allegedly crossing the border illegally in September 2021 when he moved from Ukraine to Georgia.
Thus, Khachapuridze explained that Saakashvili is expected to go to court in a wheelchair due to his «complicated state of health». The 54-year-old former president insists on being transferred to another country to receive adequate medical treatment after having spent almost 50 days on hunger strike.
However, both his lawyers and the NGO Empathy claim that the former president of the country between 2008 and 2013 is being poisoned in prison.