The Batumi-based weekly newspaper, Batumelebi, said earlier this week that it had tracked down a police officer who two years ago was trying to blackmail the newspaper's investigative reporter into cooperate with the security services.

In November, 2009 the newspaper said, that head of its investigative reporting team, Tedo Jorbenadze, was summoned by the Interior Ministry’s Special Operations Department’s (SOD) local division in Adjara Autonomous Republic where he was threatened by the police officer with the first name "Davit" to publish photos of near-naked men, Jorbenadze allegedly among them, if he refused to cooperate with the security services. About a week after the case was made public, the Interior Ministry said that the case contained "clear signs of blackmailing” and that it had launched an investigation. But no new developments have been reported since then into the investigation with the law enforcement agencies saying that it was not possible to identify an alleged blackmailer.

According to the newspaper throughout this period it was carrying out its own investigation, which eventually led to identifying the suspected blackmailer as an employee of the Interior Ministry's counter-intelligence department, Davit Devnozashvili; the newspaper said that he lives in one of the Tbilisi's central neighborhoods in Saburtalo district. The newspaper said that after finding him, its publisher, Mzia Amaglobeli, informed about it the police, which arrived on the address where Devnozashvili lives; the newspaper said that the patrol police, however, left the scene about an hour later without even compiling a protocol only telling the journalists that the investigation into their case was ongoing.

The Interior Ministry says that its internal investigations unit was looking into the new circumstances of the case. “The General Inspection continues investigation [launched back in 2009] and I hope there will be some new developments,” Shota Utiashvili, head of the Interior Ministry’s information and analytical department, told Civil.ge on November 24.

The Tbilisi-based legal advocacy group, Georgian Young Lawyers’ Association called on the law enforcement agencies “to promptly” take all the necessary measures required by the law and also to provide public with the information about its investigation into the case.