Media news out of Georgia as a newspaper in the southwestern city of Batumi has accused security forces of trying to blackmail one of its reporters.

According to English-language dispatches on the news sites Media.ge and Civil.ge, Tedo Jorbenadze, coordinator of the investigative unit at weekly Batumelebi, was summoned on 25 November to the local office of the Interior Ministry’s Special Operations Division and shown cropped photographs implying homosexual activity. In a statement, the newspaper said agents told the journalist that Russian and Turkish security services had “an interest towards the Batumelebi newspaper … and they needed his assistance and cooperation.” When Jorbenadze refused, the paper said, the agents said the photos would be sent to his ailing father and posted online.

Batumelebi’s director and editor-in-chief, Mzia Amaghlobeli and Eter Turadze, accompanied Jorbenadze to the divison’s offices but were refused entry. The newspaper has called on prosecutors to investigate what it characterized as a “KGB-style” attempt to intimidate its reporter utilizing the “stigma persisting in Georgia” regarding homosexuality.

(Disclosure: Batumelebi is a client of the Media Development Loan Fund, with which TOL has also worked.)