ABKHAZ OFFICIALS QUESTION MOTIVES OF DETAINED GEORGIAN JOURNALISTS

Apsnypress, Sukhumi
6 Mar 06

Sukhumi, 6 March: The state security service of Abkhazia has opened
criminal cases against two citizens of Georgia and one Ukrainian
citizen who were arrested last week in Gulripshi District. The state
security service told Apsnypress that they had illegally crossed the
Georgian-Abkhaz border on the Inguri river.

One of those detained – Georgian citizen Tea Sharia – was born in
1980, grew up in Abkhazia’s Gali District and now lives in Tbilisi,
where she is a student at the history faculty of Tbilisi State
University. The second Georgian citizen, Tariel Sokhadze, was born
in 1966 and grew up in Tbilisi. When he was arrested he claimed
to be one Sarkis Minosyan from the town of Leninakan [in Armenia,
now known as Gyumri]. “Neither of them had documents confirming
their identities, except for a plastic card given to Sharia by the
authorities of the so-called Autonomous Republic of Abkhazia [the
pro-Georgian government-in-exile],” the security service said.

The third individual was Temur Eliava, who was born in 1973 and raised
in [Abkhazia’s] Tqvarcheli. Since 1992 he has lived in Ukraine and
is now a citizen of that country. Eliava was carrying documents.

Under questioning the prisoners told the state security service that
they had come to Abkhazia to film monasteries and churches. They said
that they had entered Abkhazia through lower Gali District bypassing
border checkpoints and had left their documents with relatives
in Zugdidi.

At the moment they were arrested they had already been to Gali,
Tqvarcheli, Sukhumi and the village of Myku [Georgian: Mokvi]. In
their photographic and video material there were clips of a chapel
in Tqvarcheli, road and railway bridges across the Kelasuri river in
Sukhumi, railway platforms at Gumskaya station in Sukhumi, panoramas
of Sukhumi and a range of footage of other buildings not related to
religious monuments. Today, 6 March, a representative of the UN human
rights office visited the prisoners.

Foreign minister Sergey Shamba said the illegal entry of the Georgian
journalists arrested on 1 March was an act of provocation. [Passage
omitted]

“It is naive to think that the footage of railway bridges and stations
which they filmed is related to religious monuments,” Shamba said. He
doubted that Georgian Patriarch Ilia II had blessed the trip as
claimed by the prisoners.

Shamba noted that “they undoubtedly knew about the rules for crossing
state borders and came to Abkhazia bypassing border checkpoints”.

“Every international organization working in Abkhazia and Georgia
knows how to enter Abkhazia legally,” the minister said.

“The aim justified the means. They succeeded in being provocative.

The Georgian television company Rustavi-2 loudly reported the arrest
of these so-called journalists, saying that ‘Abkhaz terrorists have
beaten them up’,” Shamba said.

According to Shamba, their presence and filming in Abkhazia had
no connection to Orthodox churches. “They had completely different
motives,” the minister said.