News

In the Khunzakh District of Dagestan, within the CTO regime, power agents are carrying out house-by-house checks in the village of Orota, local residents report. The village is full of military equipment; the kindergarten and the school are closed.

According to the Kremlin press service, Russian President Vladimir Putin has instructed his subordinates to find out all the circumstances of the incident on the border of Chechnya and Ingushetia, as a result of which human rights defenders and journalists had been injured.

The special operation, begun today, by power agents in two mountain districts of Dagestan, was the second one this year in the Botlikh District, and the first in almost 1.5 years in the Khunzakh District.

In the course of the inquiry into the criminal case against the former Mayor of Makhachkala Said Amirov, the defendants' rights had been violated; and advocates' arguments were ignored – this was declared at the yesterday's court session. Amirov himself said about facts of applying torture to figurants of the case.

In Armenia, the Court of Appeal (CoA) has upheld the decision to arrest the activist Gevorg Safaryan, who is accused of using violence against an authority.

The Caucasian Geopolitical Club (CGC) has presented a collection of analytical articles and interviews of Khadjimurat Gatsalov, the Chairman of the Spiritual Administration of Muslims (SAM) of North Ossetia. In the opinion of Yana Amelina, the editor, the book pictures the Mufti as one of the leading Russian statesmen.

Power agents have begun searching for members of illegal armed formations (IAFs) and their helpers in the Botlikh and Khunzakh Districts of Dagestan, said the spokesman of the republic's operative headquarters.

The journalists, who suffered in the attack on the minivan of the Joint Mobile Group (JMG), were on their way to Grozny to collect facts about kidnappings and torture in the republic. In particular, they were interested in the circumstances of the deaths of the two natives of Chechnya, deported from Norway, said the sources of the "Caucasian Knot".

The minivan of the Joint Mobile Group (JMG) in Ingushetia was followed from Karabulak, in the outskirt of which the JMG office is located, said the driver of the minivan. According to his story, after the forced stop, he was the first to take the attackers' blow, when he refused to open the door of his minivan.

Abu Umar al-Shishani (Tarkhan Batirashvili), a native of Georgia and one of the leaders of the terrorist grouping "Islamic State" (IS), was placed in hospital with serious wounds after US airstrikes, said the Syrian Observatory of Human Rights.

On March 10, the Supreme Court (SC) of the Karachay-Cherkessian Republic (KChR), held a preliminary session on the lawsuit of the Department for the KChR of Russian Ministry of Justice (MoJ) on liquidation of the republic's movement "Adyge-Khase – Circassian Parliament".

Despite the fact that the attack on journalists and members of the "Committee against Torture" (CAT) was committed in Ingushetia, it should be associated with the authorities of the neighbouring Chechnya, said the rights defenders, interviewed by the "Caucasian Knot".

The Sovietskiy District Court of Makhachkala has dismissed the complaint of the advocate Tumas Misakyan, who asked to recognize as illegal the suspension of the investigation into the murder of the journalist Akhmednabi Akhmednabiyev and recognize illegal the investigator's inaction.

Igor Kalyapin, the head of the Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT), has treated the attacks on journalists and rights defenders in Ingushetia as a demonstration of permissiveness and action of intimidation.

The actions of the attackers on a minivan with journalists on the Ingush-Chechen border should be qualified as an attempt to interfere with their activities, said the lawyers interviewed by the "Caucasian Knot". They expressed their confidence that in the process of the inquiry the initial articles will be re-qualified to graver ones.

Russian law enforcement bodies have reacted to the news of Turkish media that Kristina Tikhonova, a native of Dagestan, allegedly involved in the organization "Islamic State" (IS), banned in Russia, intended to commit a terror act in Istanbul.

The Ukrainian aviator Nadezhda Savchenko has announced, after meeting her advocate in the SIZO (pre-trial prison), that she would start drinking water, but she would continue her hunger strike. Earlier, conflicting information was received on Savchenko's dry hunger strike.

Two Dagestani freelance journalists, a young woman being one of them, told the "Caucasian Knot" that they were beaten up today at the opening ceremony of a sports ground in Makhachkala by a senior republic's official.

The Presidential Human Rights Council (HRC) has addressed Yuri Chaika and Alexander Bastrykin, the heads of the General Prosecutor's Office (GPO) and the Investigating Committee of the Russian Federation (ICRF), accordingly, with a request to personally control the inquiry into the attacks on rights defenders and journalists in Ingushetia.

The Russian authorities must ensure the attraction to liability of those involved in the pogrom of the office of the Joint Mobile Group (JMG) and the attack on journalists and rights defenders in Ingushetia, said Johann Beer, the head of the "Reporters without Borders" (RWB). The past similar incidents are still unpunished, he said.