Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili "staged" a fictitious television news report about a Russian invasion that sparked panic in the Black Sea country, former prime minister Zurab Noghaideli said.
"If anyone had any doubt that Saakashvili owns and controls this channel, today non doubt remains," Mr Noghaideli, now an opposition leader, told reporters in the capital Tbilisi today.
"It was his dark fantasy, his own script. This report seriously damaged people's mental wellbeing, their confidence."
Late on March 13th, the Imedi television channel aired a fictitious report of a Russian invasion and the assassination of Mr Saakashvili during its evening news program.
The presenter introduced the piece by saying that it was hypothetical.
People across Georgia took the report at face value, however, and hundreds gathered outside the Imedi building yesterday to denounce it.
Imedi apologized to its viewers. Manana Manjgaladze, a spokeswoman for Mr Saakashvili, dismissed Mr Noghaideli's claims as "absurd." The president doesn't own Imedi and played no part in airing the report, she said by telephone.
The broadcast came 19 months after Russia routed Georgia's army in a five-day war over the separatist Georgian region of South Ossetia.
Mr Saakashvili said the report about a fictitious Russian tank invasion was "realistic," and illustrated the "the closest plan for what Russia could prepare for us."
"This latest bizarre incident further raises the political temperature between the government and opposition groups," said Lawrence Sheets, senior analyst and Caucasus program director with International Crisis Group.
Rusudan Simongulashvili, a 26-year-old manager at a logistics company in Tbilisi, said the report was "terrible" and Imedi should be punished for sowing panic. "My husband rushed home from the grocery store and said war had begun," she said by telephone today.
"It took us a while to realize it was a hoax. People were running around trying to get their children ready to go into bomb shelters and worrying about their loved ones."
Bloomberg