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Kakheti Regional Prosecutor’s Office Blackmails Journalists

November 19, 2008

Despite the Public Defender’s recommendation, Kakheti Regional Prosecutor’s Office did not terminate the criminal case that was launched against Jana Didebashvili and Kakha Gogilashvili, by TV-Company Imedi’s correspondents and journalist Gela Mtivlishvili in 2007 for illegal entrance into the house of Nana Japaridze. The criminal case was launched by Gurjaani Police Department of MIA.

In 2007 the Gurjaani Police Department arrested G.J., a juvenile for stealing scrap metal. The juvenile took only several tin plates from the yard of an abandoned house located near a forest. The police demanded 2 months of pre trial detention. The court released the juvenile under the 5,000 GEL bail. Journalists filmed the territory from where the scrap metal was taken. They found out that the boy had not entered the house, which was where all the valuable items were kept. The evidence presented by the journalists irritated the law enforcers. They forced the owner of the allegedly robbed house to write an appeal stating that the privacy of her property was violated by the journalists when they entered her house’s yard and examined the house (i.e. someone entered her property illegally).
 
The Office of the Public Defender of Georgia has repeatedly applied to the Kakheti Regional Prosecutor’s Office to terminate the criminal case against the journalists. However, the Regional Prosecutor’s Office failed to follow the Georgian Ombudsman’s recommendation. The Kakheti Information Center found out that whenever journalists’ work overlaps the Kakheti Regional Prosecutor’s Office’s work, they are threatened with being arrested and accused of committing a crime.

The Human Rights Center

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