“Nothing is going to break me, neither prison, nor anything,” Iveri Melashvili told a Tbilisi court earlier this month. “Be my guest, put me in prison, but I’m not going to put up with this accusation.”

Melashvili, 62, is at the center of a strange and convoluted case, in which two Georgian cartographers stand accused of trying to give away a spiritually significant piece of their homeland to neighboring Azerbaijan. 

He and colleague Natalia Ilychova were arrested on charges of treason on October 7, and now face jail sentences of up to 15 years. Both are saying they are shocked and confused by the charges and so is much of the country. Critics charge that the Georgian government invented the case to manipulate voters and discredit political rivals ahead of a fiercely contested parliamentary vote.   

The story began with a concerned citizen, who apparently unearthed maps of the border between Georgia and Azerbaijan dating back to the 1930s that prove Georgia’s ownership of a piece of territory claimed by both countries. Their supposed discovery triggered an investigation that snowballed into a scandal, in which history, the present, fact and fiction all collide.