President Saakashvili has warned that Georgian police would intervene if the Abkhaz side refused to immediately release a detained Georgian journalist.

“We have reliable information that he [the Georgian journalist] has not only been interrogated, but has been tortured in the so called investigative cell in Sokhumi,” Saakashvili told journalists in Batumi on February 27. “I want to tell [Abkhaz leader] Sergey Bagapsh and let him listen to me well - I will tell him in the Georgian language, which he knows well –he will either immediately order his illegal militia to stop torturing the Georgian journalist and release him, the kidnapped journalist, or I, the president of Georgia, will give a lawful order to Georgian police to release Basilia [the journalist], who is jailed in Sokhumi. Now, it is up to Bagapsh to decide and I demand this without any preconditions.”

Malkhaz Basilaia, chief of Mze TV’s bureau in Zugdidi, was arrested at the Enguri bridge (dividing breakaway Abkhazia from the rest of Georgia) on February 26 as he was doing a story on the Russian presidential election in Abkhazia, Mze TV said. Voting in Abkhazia has already started for Russian peacekeepers and other Russian passport holders in the province – which in itself has given rise to an official diplomatic complaint by Tbilisi.

Bagapsh said during a meeting with visiting High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour in Sokhumi on February 27 that the arrested journalist would be tried in accordance with Abkhaz law, the Abkhaz news agency, Apsnipress, reported. The Abkhaz side has charged the journalist with "illegally crossing the Abkhaz border." 

Bagapsh also said that Georgian journalists and students had many times carried out what he called "provocative actions" inside Abkhazia, but had been released without charge.

“However, our good will gestures were rebuffed by Tbilisi and so from now on Georgia cannot count upon such actions,” Apsnypress news agency quoted Bagapsh as saying. He added that the journalist's release was not open for discussion.

Other Georgian officials have also condemned the arrest and demanded the immediate release of the journalist.
 
“We categorically demand that the Georgian journalist be released. Naturally, we will use all relevant tools – both inside and outside the country – to avoid similar acts in future,” Georgian Parliamentary Chairperson Nino Burjanadze told reporters on February 27.

“The kidnapping of anyone, especially a journalist doing his job, is a grave criminal offence, amounting even to a terrorist act,” Foreign Minister Davit Bakradze said. 

Two other persons were also arrested along with a Georgian journalist by the Abkhaz side on February 26, it emerged on February 27.

One of them Davit Tsotsoria was identified by the Abkhaz side as a cameraman of the Mze TV and another Maia Danelia, mother of Tsotsoria – both internally displaced persons from Abkhazia. The Georgian media sources initially reported only about the arrest of Basilia. Reports about two other detainees emerged in the Georgian media only after the Abkhaz side reported about it on February 27.

Later on February 27 the Mze TV aired a part of video footage, reportedly recorded by the Abkhaz television, showing all three detainees at the interrogation in Sokhumi. When they were asked if they were tortured or beaten after the arrest, Tsotsoria and Danelia replayed negatively. Basilaia kept silence. Tsotsoria, however, said that they were verbally insulted.

Tsotsoria and Basilaia also told interrogators that they entered into Abkhazia after paying 1,000 Russian rubles to the Abkhaz militia. They also said they wanted to go to Abkhazia to visit their ailing relative there and also took a video camera as they wanted to film their house in Abkhazia. They said that a journalist, Malkhaz Basilaia, “just wanted to accompany us.” “The visit had no other purpose,” Tsotsoria said.