Our Georgia opposition leader and Georgia's former UN Ambassador Irakli Alasania said on Friday that it is alarming when photo correspondents and journalists are detained in a country where freedom of the press is seriously limited.
Four photojournalists, including Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili's personal photographer and his wife, were detained on spying charges early on Thursday. They are accused of providing sensitive information to an "organization operating under the patronage of a foreign state's intelligence service."
"When there is a case this loud, when it includes journalists, including the photographer from the Presidential Administration, society should be given complete information," Alasania said, adding that some of the material and details may be classified but evidence should be revealed.
Alasania said that he does not have enough information at this stage as to why and on what grounds the photo correspondents were detained and said that it is so far too early to give a political assessment of the situation.
Thursday's detention of four prominent Georgian photojournalists is not related to their professional activities, a spokeswoman for the Georgian president, Manana Mandzhgaladze said earlier on Friday.
I shouldn't speak in detail about this extremely sensitive matter, but there is one point I'd like to clarify: this case concerns a serious information leak. It has nothing to do with journalism or media activities," Mandzhgaladze said.
Mandzhgaladze said the detainees were not known for widely expressing their political views and therefore it was not correct to link their detention to a crackdown on media freedoms or political persecution.
