News

Prior to attempt on Imam Khamzat Chumakov, some stranger, unknown to his supporters, twice tried to provoke him. On the day of the attempt, he called Chumakov and mosque-goers to go to the place where later a car was exploded.

An attack on journalists and human rights defenders on the border of Ingushetia and Chechnya has hurt the reputations of the leaders of both republics and the Russian special services, involved in the region. This opinion was expressed by political analysts interviewed by the "Caucasian Knot".

Two members of the armed underground have been killed during the special operation carried out in the Khunzakh District, and law enforcers are searching for their accomplices. This was reported by the National Antiterrorist Committee (NAC).

According to human rights defenders and public figures, an attempt on Khamzat Chumakov has been committed amid the statements of criticism voiced against him by Ramzan Kadyrov; the attempt was prepared in advance and was not connected with his condemnation of attacks on journalists in Ingushetia.

Today, journalists from Sweden and Norway, hospitalized after the attack in Ingushetia, have been discharged from the hospital for outpatient treatment.

The whereabouts of seven Russian soldiers, involved as witnesses in the case of the murder of the Avetisyan family members in Gyumri are unknown. This was reported to the court in Armenia by officers of the Russian military base.

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.