president mikheil

(Reuters) – U.S. law firm Akerman is lobbying U.S. government officials to help free imprisoned former Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili, according to a filing with the U.S. Justice Department.

Massimo D’Angelo, a New York partner at the Miami-based law firm, has been working on Saakashvili’s case since July, according to a Feb. 3 disclosure filed under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

D’Angelo is part of a diplomatic push to secure Saakashvili’s release from a Georgian prison, after a court in that country on Monday declined to do so.

As part those efforts, D’Angelo and others are speaking to government officials in the U.S. and Europe about measures to hold Georgian officials accountable for Saakashvili’s imprisonment, including through economic penalties, sanctions and the suspension of foreign aid, he told Reuters on Tuesday.

“I think if he dies in prison, it’s going to cause a real rupture in the political position of Georgia” in the West, D’Angelo said.

Saakashvili, who led the former Soviet republic as a pro-Western reformer from 2004 to 2013, is serving a six-year sentence for abuse of power, a charge he and his supporters say was politically motivated. He also served in multiple Ukrainian governments, including under President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

Saakashvili was convicted without participating in his trial, and was arrested and imprisoned in 2021 when he returned to Georgia.

His legal team, which alleges that he was poisoned while in prison, plans to appeal Monday’s decision denying Saakashvili’s release to the European Court of Human Rights.

Georgian authorities have said Saakashvili is overstating the seriousness of his condition and that he is receiving proper care at a clinic in Tbilisi.