TV star's killing prompts protests

Shevardnadze: The president says all lines of inquiry are being investigated

TBILISI, Georgia - Georgia has secured international help to investigate the murder of one of the country's best known television personalities.

Georgi Sanaya, 26, a newsreader and political chat show host at independent Rustavi-2, was gunned down in his flat.

Journalists have called the killing an attack on free speech and hundreds of protesters joined a rally in Tblisi on Friday calling for an open inquiry into the killing.

A team of FBI investigators, including forensics experts, will fly to Georgia to assist in the murder hunt, the acting U.S. ambassador to Georgia, Philip Remler said on state television.

Police say Sanaya, whose body was found on Thursday, was murdered with a single bullet to the head.

The director of Rustavi-2, Erosi Kintsmarishvili, said the killing was an attempt to silence his station and journalists.

"It's a warning to all of us not to speak more than we are allowed," he said.

Colleagues, opposition politicians and members of the public held a two-hour demonstration outside parliament to call for a fair and open investigation.

One speaker said: "We demand a clear and true investigation of this case. The murderers must be detained and punished."

In an open letter to Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze, the Paris-based media rights group Reporters Sans Frontieres (RSF) said it believed the killing was a culmination of the threats made against independent journalists.

"We think it is definitely the Rustavi-2 station and its political programmes which they wanted to silence by eliminating one of its best known faces," said Robert Menard, RSF's secretary-general.

Shevardnadze has said he does believe that the killing has a political motive but that police have not ruled out the line of inquiry.