Spoof Report of Russian Attack Causes Panic in Georgia

Thousands of Georgians —? including President Mikheil Saakashvili's grandmother —? panicked Saturday night when a pro-government television station aired a hoax that Saakashvili had been killed and Russians tanks had invaded their country at the request of opposition parties.

Cell phone networks crashed, and long lines of worried people formed at gas stations and bank machines.

But by Sunday afternoon, the fear had given way to anger, and opposition supporters rallied in central Tbilisi to accuse Saakashvili of pulling off the hoax in an attempt to discredit the opposition.

Saakashvili described the fake report as “unpleasant" but “close to the real thing.”

"It was really an unpleasant film, but more unpleasant is the fact that report was maximally close to what could happen or what the enemy of Georgia has in mind,” Saakashvili said at a meeting with locals in one of the country's provinces, RIA-Novosti reported.

He did not say whether he had known about the report in advance. But if he had, he hid the information from his closest relatives.

Saakashvili said the report had scared his grandmother. "My grandmother, though she had seen me shortly before the report, got worried and nervous and, of course, a lot of people got nervous," he said.

Saakashvili's grandmother, Mzia Tsaretelli, is a retired doctor who sometimes travels with him on foreign trips.

Imedi television reported on its prime time news program Saturday night that opposition leaders had called on Russian soldiers stationed in Georgia's separatist region of South Ossetia to intervene after a Tbilisi mayoral election resulted in unrest. The city is to vote for a mayor in May.

The 20-minute report showed doctored images of President Dmitry Medvedev ordering the invasion and actual footage from the Russian-Georgian military conflict in 2008, when Moscow sent tanks deep into Georgia proper to stop an attempt by Saakashvili to retake South Ossetia by force.

The report said Saakashvili had been killed and a "people's government" had been formed under opposition leader Nino Burdzhanadze.

Imedi introduced the report as a simulation of "the worst day in Georgian history," but then broadcast it without providing any warning that the events being depicted were fictitious.

“It was a shocking report for many,” Levan Gabrichidze, a Tbilisi-based economist, said by telephone Sunday. "The possibility of a Russian invasion is part of daily life for us, and many took it for real."

Tbilisi resident Natalya Laliashvili said she missed the report but panicked when she saw long lines on Sunday morning. "I saw the lines of people near ATM machines and at gas stations, and I realized that something had happened," she told The Moscow Times.

Imedi, which apologized Sunday, made no secret in the report that it was in response to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin meeting with Burdzhanadze earlier this month and another opposition leader, former Georgian Prime Minister Zurab Nogaideli, late last year.

Burdzhanadze, a former parliamentary speaker, accused Saakashvili of masterminding Saturday's report. “Nobody at the channel would have been able to carry out this provocation without his knowledge,” Burdzhandze said, Russia 24 television reported.

Burdzhanadze said the opposition's lawyers were studying the report and intended to file a suit against Imedi within days.

Georgia's telecommunications watchdog will review sanctions against Imedi, watchdog official Irakly Mosiashvily told reporters, without elaborating.

Imedi, formerly owned by opposition-minded businessman Badri Patarkatsishvili, who died of a heart attack in murky circumstances in 2008, was sold last year by distant relatives to an investment fund controlled by the United Arab Emirate of Ras Al Khaimah, one of the leading foreign investors in Georgia.

The channel’s deputy director, Georgy Arveladze, is a former head of the presidential administration and a stanch ally of Saakashvili.

Saakashvili's office had no immediate comment on whether the president had known about the report before it aired.

But Russian politicians joined the Georgian opposition in insisting that Saakashvili had played a role in the debacle.

“This report appeared months after the Imedi station was taken under Saakashvili's control, so everything has been agreed with him,” said Sergei Markov, a senior State Duma deputy with United Russia.

Markov said the report appeared to be aimed at the opposition, not Russia. "Hatred toward Russia is Saakashvili’s political agenda, and it is important for him to discredit those who are crossing him by seeking contacts with Russia,” Markov said by telephone.

Saakashvili and Putin are openly hostile toward each other.

Konstanin Kosachev, head of the Duma's International Relations Committee, said Saakashvili was following “the same playbook" as he used in 2008 to justify the attempt to retake South Ossetia, Channel One television reported.

Markov suggested that the report offered Russian officials with an opportunity to discredit Saakashvili's democratic credentials in the eyes of the West. He said the report called into question Georgia's media freedoms.

The hoax and the resulting panic were reminiscent of the mass hysteria witnessed in the United States in 1938 when actor Orson Welles read simulated news bulletins on the radio about the world being invaded by aliens as part of the play, "The War of the Worlds."

But Gabrichidze, the Tbilisi economist, said there was one big difference between the Orson Welles' play and the Imedi report. The report, he said, was "badly made."