Opposition activist arrested for assaulting a photo reporter

A Georgian man has been arrested and charged after he physically assaulted a photo reporter in Tbilisi.

Ivane Begiashvili, 21, was arrested and charged with forceful and unlawful interfering in the professional activities of Irakli Gedenidze, and for intentionally damaging his camera.

Gedenidze, who works for Georgian online news agency Interpressnews, was covering yesterday’s central city demonstration against the country’s ruling Georgian Dream coalition and leading opposition party United National Movement, when protester Begiashvili accused him of provocation, assaulted him and broke his camera.

Video footage of the assault showed another man held Gedenidze during the attack and prevented him from escaping the vicious assault.

Today Gedenidze is recovering from the incident. He said he told Begiashvili before he was assaulted that he was a photo journalist and was covering the demonstration for Interpressnews.

Police arrested Begiashvili shortly after the demonstration.

Georgian television Maestro today expressed concern over the incident and evaluated it as "gross interference in the journalist’s activities”.

Maestro refused to broadcast the political forces who participated in the demonstration until the rally organisers publically took responsibility for the incident and compensated Gedenidze for the financial loss he suffered because of the assault.

Yesterday’s demonstration was organised by opposition parties Free Georgia, Christian-Democratic Movement and political union Reformers.

Earlier, leaders of the demonstration responded to the incident and apologised on behalf of the offenders.

Kakha Kukava, leader of Free Georgia, said the person who held Gedenidze while he was attacked was the father of Ivane Begiashvili, and he had since been excluded from the party.

Photo journalist Gedenidze was formerly the personal photographer of ex-president Mikheil Saakashvili but was later accused of passing secret information regarding the president’s movements to Russian intelligence.Gedenidze, his wife and two other photographers were charged with espionage in 2011.

Gedenidze has vigorously defended the charge and implied his arrest was politically motivated and an attack on media freedom.

The lawyer of one of the arrested people published a letter that stated the charges against the four people were in retaliation for them having distributed photographs of a May 26, 2011 rally that had been violently broken up by riot police. The charges against Gedenidze, his wife and the two other photographers were dropped and removed from their criminal records in March 2013.