“The BBC report is not only false, but a cheap provocation orchestrated by foreign intelligence services, which serves two purposes,” GD Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze stated at a briefing today.
According to Kobakhidze, Georgia’s ill-wishers want to create a pretext for continuing blackmail against the Georgian people and the government they have elected.
“To dramatise the issue, the BBC spread false information, as if the Ministry of Internal Affairs used ‘camite’, a banned substance from the First World War era, when dispersing the rally. The Minister of Internal Affairs has already publicly confirmed that not only was the substance ‘camite’ not used when dispersing the rally, but the Ministry of Internal Affairs has never, even during the United National Movement’s rule, acquired this substance.
Based on the information circulated by the BBC, the State Security Service has launched an investigation, and the public will be provided with a thorough update as soon as possible.
Clearly, the BBC report is not only false but a cheap provocation orchestrated by foreign intelligence services, which serves two purposes. First, to give our country’s ill-wishers a pretext to revive the fading protest momentum artificially, and second, our country’s ill-wishers want to create a pretext for continuing blackmail against the Georgian people and the government they have elected. This report will in no way serve to accomplish these two objectives,” stated Kobakhidze.
According to Irakli Kobakhidze, “the OSCE ministerial is approaching, as well as the next meeting of the European Commission, in whose documents the informal rulers will attempt to cite the false information broadcast by the BBC”.
“Specific politicians, including MEPs, are already preparing the ground for this with their usual false statements. This campaign reminds us of the campaign built on lies, widely deployed in the international media by the European bureaucracy, about Mikheil Saakashvili’s poisoning. As part of this campaign, the ambassadors of 27 EU countries visited Georgia’s Minister of Justice with an official démarche.
Today, it is widely recognised that both the aforementioned campaign and the BBC report were fundamentally based on lies. However, following this shameful campaign based on lies, neither the European bureaucracy nor the relevant media outlets accepted responsibility.
It is fundamentally important for us that the false information disseminated by the BBC does not go unanswered, which is why, as is already known, alongside conducting an investigation, we plan to lodge appeals with both the Office of Communications (Ofcom), the UK’s regulator for the communications services, and, if required, international justice mechanisms, to ensure the BBC is held accountable and retracted the false information disseminated with the hallmarks of intelligence services,” - Kobakhidze stated.
