Briefly Noted

On May 23, 2024, the Fifth Section of the Court issued its judgment in Saakashvili v. Georgia concerning the immunity of former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili from prosecution for acts committed while in office. After giving up his Georgian citizenship and becoming a Ukrainian national, Saakashvili was convicted in absentia in two separate sets of criminal proceedings against him and was sentenced to a total of six years in prison. As part of a larger effort to make reparations for past wrongdoing, the Georgian Government received over 20,000 complaints from people claiming to be victims of serious human rights violations committed during the rule of Saakashvili's political party, the United National Movement, and under his presidency. The first case concerned a July 2005 attack on a member of parliament who was forced out of his car, beaten by several men, and was left permanently disfigured. The member of parliament alleged that the attack was retaliation for an interview he gave in which he spoke negatively about Saakashvili and his wife. The second case concerned Saakashvili's pardoning of four former high-ranking officials of the Ministry of the Interior who had been convicted of murder. That led to a separate investigation being opened in 2014 to explore charges of abuse of power.