Saakashvili detained in a Kyiv restaurant - Sakvarelidze

Former Georgian president and Ukraine's Movement of New Forces leader Mikheil Saakashvili was taken away by some people wearing camouflage uniform from a restaurant in Kyiv, his associate David Sakvarelidze wrote on his Facebook page.

“Just now in restaurant Suluguni on 10 Muzeinyi Ln, unknown masked individuals grabbed Mikheil Saakashvili and drove him in an unknown direction. They were in three white Volkswagen vans”, - the message says.

The former Forbes Ukraine editor-in-chief, Volodymyr Fedorin, wrote on his Facebook page: "People wearing GPSU [Ukrainian State Border Guard Service] jackets took Saakashvili away".

In late January 2018, Georgia's chief prosecutor, Irakli Shotadze, told journalists that Tbilisi was waiting for a response from Kyiv on the extradition of Saakashvili.

As the Ministry of Justice of Georgia and the General Prosecutor's Office previously stated, the request for extradition of Saakashvili was sent to Ukraine several times. Several criminal cases have been opened against him in Georgia. In early January, the Tbilisi City Court in absentia sentenced M. Saakashvili to three years in prison. In the summer of 2017, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko stripped Saakashvili of Ukrainian citizenship when he was outside the country, but he managed to return to Ukraine.

On January 26, 2018, the Kyiv Court of Appeal chose a night house arrest for Saakashvili, partially satisfying the request of the prosecutor's office, which asked for round-the-clock arrest. The validity period of the elected preventive measure expired on February 6.

The politician is suspected in crimes under part 2 of Art. 256 of the Criminal Code - assistance to participants of criminal organizations and concealment of their criminal activity. The prosecutor's office thinks that the protest rallies headed by Saakashvili in Ukraine were sponsored by the runaway oligarch Serhiy Kurchenko (one of Viktor Yanukovych's entourage) in order to seize power.