The President of Georgia sits down in an interview with BBC HARDTalk show on Monday. Salome Zourabichvili also answered questions about Mikheil Saakashvili.

QUESTION: You have the power as President to pardon him. Why don’t you?
ZOURABICHVILI: I don’t. I don’t have that power.

QUESTION: But you could push for that. You were a Foreign Minister in his administration.
ZOURABICHVILI: No, I don’t have the power because, for one very simple reason is that, the sentencing is not closed. He’s still being judged. And that’s the law in Georgia that pardon can intervene only when everything is finished.

QUESTION: So, would you pardon him once everything is finished?
ZOURABICHVILI: That’s another issue. I’ve explained at length in Georgia why I wouldn’t do it because it’s a factor for major polarization. People have believed under his regime and there is not practically one family in Georgia that has not experienced what it meant to have that type of autocratic regime. So, I don’t feel that I have to become an instrument for more polarization. But, at the same time, I’m the Head of State, where I don’t want an ex-president to die in prison or to suffer irremediable consequences, and so I’ve been very close to monitoring all the medical, and there is, in fact, I was waiting for today that there would be a new conclusion of the international medical team that has been examining him, but it’s not yet out. I’ve been saying publicly in Georgia that I think that he should be extradited, or I don’t know what is the term, to be able to receive additional ease in the hospital since six months, but that’s a decision that has to be taken by the Court.