Georgia’s jailed ex-president and opposition leader Mikheil Saakashvili renewed a hunger strike to protest what he said was the government’s failure to provide him with proper medical care. “Today, I am going on a hunger strike,” Saakashvili told a Tbilisi court, explaining, “my demand is that I am given adequate medical care, as advised by independent doctors,” who diagnosed him with a serious neurological condition resulting from his previous 50-day hunger strike last year.
Georgia’s president from 2004 to 2013, 54-year-old Saakashvili was arrested and jailed on October 1 shortly after he secretly returned to Georgia from exile in Ukraine. He then refused food for 50 days to protest his jailing for abuse of office, a conviction he has denounced as politically motivated. – AFP
