By Pavel Polityuk and Natalia Zinets
KIEV, Dec 5 (Reuters) – Ukraine detained former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili on Tuesday on suspicion of assisting a criminal organisation, sparking clashes between his supporters and police who fired teargas into the crowd.
Masked officers dragged Saakashvili from an apartment in the capital Kiev while his supporters protested on the street and tried to stop the police van from leaving, crowding the vehicle and setting up a barricade with tyres, wood and stones.
It is the latest twist in a prolonged feud between Ukrainian authorities and Saakashvili, who was invited by President Petro Poroshenko to become a regional governor after protests in 2014 ousted a pro-Russian president but quickly fell out with his one-time ally.
Addressing supporters earlier from the roof of the house, Saakashvili had accused Poroshenko of being a traitor and a thief. He tried to address the crowd again as he was being bundled into a blue minivan.
“What they are doing is lawlessness in the eyes of the whole world,” Saakashvili said. “I urge all Ukrainians to take to the streets and drive out the thieves.”
Saakashvili could be jailed for up to five years if found guilty. Georgian prosecutors said they had not been informed of Tuesday’s developments by their Ukrainian counterparts. The 49-year-old is wanted in Georgia on criminal charges which he says were trumped up for political reasons.
Saakashvili made a dramatic return to Ukraine in September, barging his way across the border from Poland despite having been stripped of Ukrainian citizenship and facing the threat of possible extradition to Georgia.
He wants to unseat Poroshenko and replace him with a new, younger politician. His supporters have camped in tents outside parliament and launched sporadic protests since his return.
“We have been waiting for it (the arrest) for months, of course, and especially in the recent weeks,” Saakashvili’s wife Sandra Roelofs told Georgian TV Rustavi 2.
“It’s illegal and outrageous.”
Saakashvili was made governor of the Odessa region in 2015 on the strength of the reforms he carried out in Georgia.
But he fell out with Poroshenko, accusing him of corruption, while Poroshenko’s office said Saakashvili was trying to deflect from his own shortcomings as an administrator.
Saakashvili’s supporters see him as a fearless crusader against corruption but critics say there is little substance behind his blustery rhetoric.
Back home in Georgia, where he took power after a peaceful pro-Western uprising, known as the Rose Revolution, in 2003, his time in office was tarnished by what critics said was his monopolising power and exerting pressure on the judiciary.
He was president at the time of a disastrous five-day war with Russia in 2008, a conflict that his critics argued was the result of his own miscalculations.
(Additional reporting by Margarita Antidze in Tbilisi; Writing by Matthias Williams; Editing by Catherine Evans)
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