WARSAW (Reuters) – A Polish medical team is ready to go to Georgia to check the health of former president Mikheil Saakashvili, a government spokesman in Warsaw said on Monday, as fears over his condition grow.
Saakashvili, 55, was sent to prison in 2021 for six years on charges of abusing his power while president of the ex-Soviet state, a charge he says was politically motivated.
His health deteriorated in prison, where he has staged repeated hunger strikes and alleges he was poisoned. He is being held and treated in a clinic in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi.
Asked if Poland planned to send doctors to see him, government spokesman Piotr Muller told a news conference: “I confirm that … a humanitarian aid team… is ready to go to Georgia.
“Now we are waiting for agreement from the Georgian side… as we know the situation concerning the medical care of the former president of Georgia raises serious doubts in the international community and that is why we are ready to clear up those doubts in this way.”
Saakashvili’s supporters say Georgian authorities are denying him proper treatment. Georgian officials say he is feigning the gravity of his condition to secure early release.
Warsaw had previously proposed to the Georgian government that Saakashvili be treated in Poland.
On Sunday, British broadcaster Sky News quoted Saakashvili, a pro-Western reformer who ran the republic from 2004 to 2013 and lost a brief war with Russia in 2008, as saying he had lost so much weight that he was approaching a level where doctors say he could suffer multiple organ failure.
(Reporting by Alan Charlish; editing by Philippa Fletcher)
