Interior Ministry rejects alleged delivery of secret cargo from Russia to Middle East through Georgian ports

The Interior Ministry’s Strategic Communications Department on Sunday rejected information spread by the opposition-minded TV Pirveli channel about the delivery of secret cargo from Russian seaports to the Middle East and Hamas by allegedly using Georgian ports.

The TV report was based only on lies. No documentary evidence was provided to ascertain the truth of the alleged facts”, the body said.

As the Department explained, the SeaVision, the United State’s vision inspection system, applied by Georgia’s Joint Maritime Operations Centre, on June 22 detected the Barbados-flagged dry cargo ship GIVING on Georgia’s Black Sea Poti port raid. 

The body stressed the Coast Guard Department of the Ministry’s Border Police and the Georgian Maritime Transport Agency were informed of the case the same day “to conduct a visual inspection of the sea space”, but after the inspection “the ship was not observed in Georgian territorial waters by that time”, it added.

The Coast Guard Department also notified the SeaVision technical service of the border monitoring system of the US Naval Command in Europe on this case, which in July informed JMOC that the mentioned fact was an “anomalous case” that could have been caused by two main factors - deliberate entry and manipulation of incorrect information in the system by the crew to hide the actual location and also, due to the negative impact of radio-electronic combat methods resulted from the recent hostilities on the Black Sea, the Department noted.

The above-mentioned anomalies are observed in different countries of the world, and the SeaVision technical service of the border monitoring system of the US Naval Command noted they are working on improving the programme in order to minimise the detection of anomalous cases", the Department said.

The body also highlighted the “effective” cooperation between the United States and the JMOC - the body established in 2014 on the Black Sea coast with the USA’s financial support. 

It added the false information disseminated by TV Pirveli aimed at “deliberately misleading the citizens, creating agitation and discrediting the state agencies of Georgia”, including the Ministry of Internal Affairs.