“Putting any journalist in jail for anything that is not obvious or criminal activity is a problem,” said Lieutenant General (retired) Ben Hodges, the former commanding general of the US Army Europe, following a meeting with Shota Gvineria, Senior Fellow at the Economic Policy Research Center (EPRC).

Hodges was asked to comment on the imprisonment of Nika Gvaramia, General Director of Mtavari Arkhi TV.

“There is a reason that in the United States, in the Constitution, the Founding Fathers, people who wrote the Constitution, put in there that freedom of the press was an essential element of a democracy. So, I think putting any journalist in jail for anything that is not obvious or criminal activity, I have a problem with.

If a journalist is put in jail for political reasons, every other journalist in the country should be terrified. So regardless of what organization you work for, journalists have to stay together when everybody else cares about democracy and needs to be very concerned when a journalist is put in jail.

Again I am not talking about if they had a driving accident or some kind of criminal activity. But if authorities don’t like what they write or what they say, then, I think, it is a threat that needs to be addressed,” he said.

The meeting at the EPRC touched on the war in Ukraine and its impact on the Black Sea Region.