News

On December 25, Georgian law enforcers handed over Robert Agvanyan, wanted in Armenia for importing an "Igla" (Needle) man-portable air-defence system (MANPADS), to Armenia, the General Prosecutor's Office (GPO) of Armenia has stated.

The Georgian Prosecutor's Office is investigating the circumstances of the counterterrorist operation (CTO), during which a 19-year-old villager in the Pankisi Gorge was seriously wounded. In its appeal to the government, the village council of elders treated law enforcers' actions as unacceptable.

In the capital of Chechnya, law enforcers have checked IDs of local residents and drivers, Grozny residents reported.

Two doctors from Belarus, who in Libya were forced to continue working under their contracts, were released after the intervention of the Chechen leader, the "Kommersant" reports.

The Georgian President Giorgi Margvelashvili has timed the pardoning to the New Year. 123 prisoners will quit their colonies today.

The Court of Khasavyurt has sentenced a local resident to 18 years of imprisonment in a penal colony. The man is accused of raping his seven-year-old daughter and beating his eight-year-old son, the Prosecutor's Office reports.

The decision of Aina Gamzatova, the wife of the Dagestani Mufti, to run for presidency was not coordinated with Kremlin, but even such an attempt gives candidates a chance to become all-Russian-scale public figures, the political analysts, interviewed by the "Caucasian Knot", believe.

Khava Ibragimova, who was evacuated during the first Chechen War from Grozny, on December 25 returned to her mother, who had been looked for her all these years. The return of the disabled girl to her family from a boarding school in Dagestani Buynaksk became possible after a DNA examination.

Within the last 24 hours, Armenian and Karabakh militaries violated the ceasefire regime for 118 times, the Azerbaijani Ministry of Defence (MoD) has reported, adding that villages of the Gazakh and Tovuz Districts were shelled.

In the period from March to December, about 1000 animals were sterilized in a Makhachkala dog kennel, but the problem of catching stray dogs still remains urgent, the authorities report.

Germany has followed France and changed its attitudes towards asylum seekers from Chechnya. Some of them face deportation to their homeland. In Europe, most refugees from Chechnya are afraid of being persecuted by Ramzan Kadyrov's agents and they have to abandon public criticism of the republic's authorities.

The Association of Teachers and Researchers of the Ossetian Language and Literature collects signatures under an appeal to the President of Russia with a request to introduce a compulsory study of the second state language in schools of Northern Ossetia.

Natives of Chechnya, who lived in Cairo, were detained and placed to a deportation prison. This is reported by a member of the Dagestani Diaspora in Egypt.

Djambulat Umarov, Chechen Minister for External Relations, Press and Information, Elkhan Suleimanov, Chechen Minister for Public Health, and the Aishat Kadyrova's fashion house "Firdaus" continue to keep their pages in Instagram, despite the massive withdrawal of officials and institutions from the social network.

Ruslan Ugurchiev, a resident of Ingushetia, accused of illegal storage of arms and ammunition, has complained of torture aimed to obtain his confession, the Human Rights Centre (HRC) "Memorial" reported.

When explaining his refusal to testify, the former President of Georgia said that the Security Service of Ukraine (known as SBU) has combined in one notice the summons for various investigative actions.

Today, five persons have been detained in the Pankisi Gorge. One of them was wounded when he tried to throw a grenade to law enforcers, the State Security Service of Georgia reported.

The Azerbaijani Ministry of Justice (MoJ) has suspected Talekh Bagirzade, the leader of the "Muslim Unity" movement, who is serving his 20-year-long imprisonment, of keeping some prohibited object in his prison cell, his advocate has stated.

One of the local residents detained today in the Pankisi Gorge is suspected of rendering assistance to Akhmed Chataev killed in a special operation in Tbilisi.

On December 25, Baatr Lidjiev, the deputy head of the Kalmykia's Permanent Mission under the President, suggested the TV series which showed a Buddhist statuette with an attached statuette of a naked woman had offended the believers' feelings.