Journalist Mari Otarashvili Threatened with Expulsion from Akhalgori

Goga Apciauri, Gori, Media.ge

On July 22, journalist Mari Otarashvili of TV company Channel 9, concurrently employed at the Georgian daily Rezonansi and Mtskheta-Mtianeti Information Center, was detained. For a few hours she was held in detention at the police station and afterwards she was taken to the Prosecutor’s Office. Upon being detained, police seized her video camera, phone and Form #9 (the paper issued by de facto authorities of South Ossetia to individuals registered in Akhalgori). Later on, the seized equipment was given back but the Form #9 was withheld. Without this paper entry is not granted to the settlement. It is noteworthy that Mari Otarashvili is registered in Akhalgori, has a house and relatives there and visits the place rather often. After the interrogation she was sent home from the Prosecutor’s Office, without any official charges against her.

Ossetian law enforcement officers were asking her about a phone message mentioning her name. According to law enforcement, Akhalgori resident Tamar Mearkishvili sent the message by mistake to Zaira Elkanova, director of the Akhalgori orphanage. Zaira Elkanova reported this to the local Prosecutor’s Office. According to law enforcement officials, the message was quasi meant for Georgian law enforcement.

Tamar Mearkishvili denied sending any message to Elkanova, and gave the following version to Media.ge:

“According to the message I had ‘recorded Nurgaliev’s visit and filmed everything, all the meetings with local officials. I am copying the footage to the memory stick and sending it through Mari [Otarashvili],’ and they say I sent the message to Elkanova by mistake. I haven’t got the phone number of this woman at all. How can you dial a number you haven’t got stored in your phone? I am not cooperating with any kind of security agency,” Tamar Mearkishvili said.

She demanded an objective investigation into the case and lodged a complaint against Elkanova at the local Prosecutor’s Office for libel. Elkanova, she alleged, keeps watching her and reports to the Ossetian special services about every step of hers. Mearkishvili alleges Elkanova had repeatedly threatened her with expulsion. 

Currently Mari Otarashvili is at home in Akhlagori, expecting expulsion. She thinks Elkanova is plotting a filthy provocation against her. She suspects that the director of the orphanage is cooperating with Georgian special services.

“I asked the prosecutor to launch a thorough investigation of the message concerned. The message mentioned only ‘Mari’ and why does that have to be me? And if it is a message from Tamari, she should be interrogated first, I said. They did not want to hear anything. I think the reason is to expel me from here. Prosecutor Dato Gurtsiev visited me at home. He ordered me to pack so that they could drive me to the de facto border and deport me. But I resisted, telling him to present an order by which I was going to be deported. It’s a verbal order, he said, stating they have no written orders. I stood up to him, telling him he had no right to kick me out of my own house,” Mari Otarashvili says.

Mearkishvili and Otarashvili flatly refuse cooperation with any special service. Some individuals, they allege, are organizing a filthy provocation against them. Mari Otarashvili is now demanding Form #9 back since travelling is impossible without it.