{"id":97546,"date":"2011-05-23T11:12:04","date_gmt":"2011-05-23T06:12:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.epress.am\/?p=97546"},"modified":"2011-05-23T11:14:32","modified_gmt":"2011-05-23T06:14:32","slug":"former-defense-minister-promises-return-to-georgia-to-overthrow-saakashvili","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/2011\/05\/23\/former-defense-minister-promises-return-to-georgia-to-overthrow-saakashvili.html","title":{"rendered":"Former Defense Minister Promises Return to Georgia to Overthrow Saakashvili"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Former Georgian defense minister Irakli Okruashvili, who fled the country from criminal persecution,\u00a0 promised to return to Georgia to participate in the May 25 opposition rally.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;May 25 will be the last day of the current administration,&#8221; Okruashvili declared, in a brief interview by phone aired on the Tbilisi-based Maestro TV.<\/p>\n<p>Since 2007, Okruashvili has been living in France where he has received political asylum, reports <a href=\"http:\/\/www.civil.ge\/eng\/article.php?id=23485\"><strong>Civil.ge<\/strong><\/a>. In March 2008, he was sentenced to an 11-year prison term in Georgia in absentia.<\/p>\n<p>As reported by Novosti-Gruzya (&#8220;News Georgia&#8221;), the Georgian Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA) has promised to arrest Okruashvili as soon as he returns to his homeland. &#8220;We are waiting for him,&#8221; said head of the MIA&#8217;s Informational-Analytical Department Shota Utiashvili.<\/p>\n<p>On May 21, there were mass opposition rallies in Georgia demanding the resignation of President Mikhail Saakashvili. The opposition has pledged to continue protesting till May 25.<\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Former Georgian defense minister Irakli Okruashvili, who fled the country from criminal persecution,  promised to return to&#8230;<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":97506,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tstyn_error":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[10256,26866,26867],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97546"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97546"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97546\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/97506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}