Earlier this week, Georgia's Defense Minister Dmitri Shashkin fled the country: "I have taken the decision to leave Georgia with the hope that I will come back and will have the possibility to serve my country and my people again," Shashkin assured supporters on his Facebook page (though without revealing his whereabouts). It's widely assumed that Shashkin fled to avoid prosecution for a prisoner abuse scandal that took place when he was running Georgia's prison systems back in 2009. News of the scandal broke just before the country's parliamentary election on October 1, when Georgian voters handed a major defeat to Shashkin's political patron, President Mikheil Saakashvili.