Georgian police detain journalist for allegedly disobeying orders

Saba Sordia, a journalist for the online magazine Indigo, was detained in the street in Tbilisi by law enforcement officers after they checked his identity and searched his bag. His lawyer has said the detention was illegal.

Indigo reported about his detention on Sunday.

The local civil rights group Social Justice Centre (SJC) stated that police detained Sordia in the area surrounding the Marjanishvili metro station.

According to the SJC, Sordia told his lawyer that his detention was preceded by a police request for his ID card. After that, according to the SJC, the police also asked Sordia to open his bag, which he complied with, but an argument ensued when the police tried to open another pocket of the bag — which Sordia said he would do himself.

'This argument led to the detention of Saba Sordia; [...] According to Saba, the police did not explain to him on what grounds they were detaining him, nor that he was being detained administratively. He was only told about this after being transferred to the department’, the statement read.

The Interior Ministry has said that Sordia has been administratively detained for disobeying the lawful request of a police officer.

In its assessment, the SJC said that since Sordia complied with the police request and allowed law enforcement officers to identify him and search his bag, ‘his detention was groundless and illegal’.

The executive director of Indigo, Nata Dzvelishvili, said on Monday that Sordia’s ‘detention in the isolation ward has been extended’.

‘No one is saying when the trial will be held, so we’ll have to find out by chance’, she wrote on Facebook.

On Sunday, Mariam Kvelashvili, a lawyer for the SJC, said after visiting Sordia in the pre-trial detention centre that he told her that while being transferred to the police station, law enforcement officers said ‘homophobic words [at him] because he was wearing an earring’.

Kvelashvili said police officers also confiscated Sordia’s GoPro, which is now in police possession.

‘Saba asked not to lose the video camera, to which he was told that if he repeated it again, they would break the camera’, Kvelashvili stated, adding that it was ‘inappropriate behaviour on the part of a police officer’.

According to the SJC, ‘recently, arbitrary and groundless searches of citizens and their subsequent detention have become another tool of intimidation and repression in the hands of the police’.

The SJC added that recently, there have been particularly frequent reports of mass searches and searches of citizens by the police on the streets and in public places.

‘Despite the fact that Georgian legislation gives the police the right to search after a search only if an illegal item is found on a person during a superficial search, the police often abuse their authority and ask citizens to open their bags’.

SJC reported that ‘it is extremely problematic that the police arbitrarily detain people on the street and do not inform their families’.

‘Sordia’s friends became suspicious of his detention because they saw his moped near the place where Saba was supposed to meet them. The police did not inform either his family or relatives of Saba’s detention’.

‘The arbitrary and uncontrolled actions of the police, in addition to completely ignoring the basic principles of the rule of law and legality, create a sense of insecurity and distrust of law enforcement agencies among citizens’, the statement read.

‘The violent crimes committed by law enforcement agencies in recent months, which remain uninvestigated to this day, undermine the principles of a state based on the rule of law and human rights’.

The Media Advocacy Coalition stated on Monday that independent media is the ruling Georgian Dream ‘regime’s main target’.

‘Sordia’s detention is yet another case of a systemic repressive policy against the media, the scale of which is growing day by day’.

‘The detention of journalists on such a convenient pretext as “disobedience to the police” is an abuse of the powers of law enforcement agencies. This is a deliberate tactic to create a deterrent effect on media freedom and intimidate other journalists’, the statement continued.In recent years, but particularly over the last year, Georgian Dream and its satellites in the parliament have been  introducing and adopting restrictive laws against TV, radio, and online media outlets.