In a letter sent to Georgia’s PM Bidzina Ivanishvili last week, five U.S. Senators said they were “deeply troubled” and concerned about the possibility that recent legal proceedings against officials from the previous administration “are politically motivated and designed to settle political scores”, The Cable, a blog of The Foreign Policy magazine, reported on December 11.
The letter, dated December 7, is signed by Jeanne Shaheen, Democrat representing New Hampshire; Joe Lieberman, an Independent from Connecticut; John McCain, a Republican from Arizona; James Risch, a Republican from Idaho and Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina.
Senators McCain, Lieberman and Graham visited Georgia less than a month before the October 1 parliamentary elections and Senators Shaheen and Risch were in Georgia during the polls as official election observers.
“We are deeply troubled by reports of detentions, investigations, imprisonment and allege persecution of political figures associated with the opposition party [UNM] in Georgia,” they wrote in the letter. “We write today to express our growing concerns about the possibility that these moves are politically motivated and designed to settle political scores in the aftermath of the recent election.”
