News

In Moscow, policemen wounded Zelimkhan Yusupov, a native of Chechnya, who was armed with a knife. The man has been hospitalized. He is suspected of trying to attack the policemen.

Investigators do not allow visits of relatives to Zarifa Sautieva at a SIZO (pre-trial prison), and today, due to the fact that the court was declared to be held behind closed doors, only participants of the trial were allowed to attend the court hearing, relatives of the Ingush activist report.

A soldier got a slight wound as a result of an act of sabotage in the north-eastern direction of the Armenian-Azerbaijani border, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) of Armenia reports.

Ismail Denilkhanov, the chairman of the Chechen Public Chamber, appealed to residents of the republic and called reports of the alleged coronavirus epidemic in the region a fake. Instagram users supported the Ismail Denilkhanov's statement. They also called on to put amendments to the law on dissemination of false information on social networks.

The rating of the World Health Organization (WHO) has placed Georgia among the countries with weak epidemic prevention capabilities. Insufficient measures have been taken to protect the population, the WHO has noted.

At the request of the Azerbaijani government, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has excluded from the list of considered complaints the application of Ogtai Gyulyalyev, the coordinator of the public alliance "Azerbaijan without Political Prisoners". The country's authorities have undertaken to pay compensation for his arrest.

Over almost three years after the decision of the Russian Supreme Court to liquidate all the organizations of Jehovah's Witnesses, announced as extremist, hundreds of Jehovah's Witnesses* in different regions of Russia were criminally prosecuted. By March 5, 2020, the number of such believers has reached at least 320, says the website containing information about criminal cases against Jehovah's Witnesses*. Almost 12% of them are residents of Southern Russia, the "Caucasian Knot" has counted.

Shakhla Gumbatova, whose powers as a lawyer are suspended in Azerbaijan, has become a laureate of the US Department of State's International Award "Women of Courage".

The guilt of five residents of the Astrakhan Region, sentenced to long terms under the case of a unit of the "Islamic State" (IS, a terrorist organization banned in Russia by the court), has not been proved; the verdict will be appealed against, the advocates have stated. Relatives complain that they could not see the defendants from the day they were detained.

Pashazade Orkhan Nazim oglu, an Azerbaijani border guard, was mortally wounded during a shelling attack committed by Armenia, the Azerbaijani State Frontier Service has stated.

Despite the objections of hundreds of candidates for MPs, the Constitutional Court (CC) of Azerbaijan has declared that the parliamentary elections have taken place. On March 5, outside the CC building, protesters promised to complain to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) about election violations.

For the second day in a row, Dagestan authorities make no reaction to the pickets held by Murtazali Gasanguseinov, the father of the murdered Gasanguseinov shepherd brothers. He explains his pickets by an attempt to prevent new killings of innocent people by law enforcers.

In Yaroslavl, law enforcers planted explosives to Arthur Kadiev, a native of Dagestan, and tortured him to force him to confess to plotting a terror act, the journal "7x7"reports.

A sharp statement voiced by the acting President of Abkhazia, who demanded from the Russian authorities to justify the Russian media's reports about the poisoning of Aslan Bzhaniya, was addressed to the Abkhaz electorate on the eve of the presidential election and would not entail any deterioration in the Russian-Abkhaz relations. This opinion was voiced by analysts interviewed by the "Caucasian Knot".

In a conflict between residents of Dagestan and law enforcers, both sides behaved inappropriately, the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MA) of Dagestan declares.

Law enforcers detained two persons after searches in a case on a rally in Magas, and one more person was put on the wanted list, sources report.

The positions of the Azerbaijani troops on the border with Armenia and in the Karabakh conflict zone were shelled 25 times within 24 hours, including from sniper rifles, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) of Azerbaijan reports today.

On March 4, in Brussels, law enforcers detained Fuad Akperov, a member of the organization of Azerbaijani political emigrants. His colleagues have linked the detention with Fuad's political activities.

Jens Shelund, an advocate for Tumso Abdurakhmanov, has drawn attention of Swedish media to the blood feud announced by Speaker Magomed Daudov to the blogger. The assassination of Zelimkhan Khangoshvili has caused a political scandal; therefore, new executions of Kadyrov's critics are presented as domestic crimes, the "Vaifond" Association asserts.

In 2019, human rights violations and persecutions of activists continued in Russia and Azerbaijan, says the report of the international organization "Freedom House" released on March 4. Human rights defenders ranked Georgia and Armenia as partly free countries.