News

The decision to put the letter by Polina Zherebtsova to Mikhail Khodorkovsky on the list of extremist materials is illegal, said the experts of the "Sova" Information-Analytical Centre.

After the promises of the Minister of Energy of Armenia to repay all the wage debts before the end of July, ex-workers of the "Nairit" Factory decided to postpone the start of their sit-in strike, while continuing a series of pickets.

Gennady Vorabyev, who went on hunger strike demanding to provide housing to his family, continues his protest for the third day. According to the protester, he is day-and-night in his car in the centre of the city and drinks only water.

Five regions out of seven in the North-Caucasian Federal District (NCFD) and Adygea have announced the first days of Eid ul-Fitr (Uraza-Bayram) as holidays. At the same time, Muslims of Dagestan and Chechnya will complete their fasting on July 18 – a day later than in other regions.

The protest movement in Armenia has become a transition to a new stage of the country's political life, said the Armenian political expert interviewed by the "Caucasian Knot". According to their forecasts, demands to change the power, or a decline of opposition's activeness should follow. However, the experts are sure that they see the interest of the authorities in all that.

According to the court judgement, deductions are made from the pension of Mirzamagomed Lukmanov, a resident of Izberbash and a category II invalid, to repay a large debt to gas-supplying companies. The pensioner himself states that he had regularly paid the bills; and his advocate is preparing an application for a retrial of the case.

The convicts serving their terms in Colony No. 9 in Volgograd have posted video clips on the Internet showing the poor custody conditions in their colony. The colony bosses have launched a check; but already before its end, they have partially refuted the convicts' information.

None of the three persons killed in Baksan on July 14 was on the federal wanted list, said a law enforcement source from the Kabardino-Balkarian Republic (KBR).

Collective breaking of the fasting for believers in connection with the forthcoming end of the Ramadan was held in the mosques of Chechnya. Civil servants said that their participation in the event was not voluntary.

The Committee against Torture (CaT) disagrees with the answer received from Alexander Savenkov, a deputy head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA) of Russia, who saw no inaction of the police during the attack on the office of rights defenders.

Today, the exhibition "The Never-Ending Story: Violence and Impunity in Northern Caucasus" was opened in Moscow today on the sixth anniversary of the murder of Natalia Estemirova.

The main environmental problem in Adygea is contamination of soil and rivers by agricultural producers, said members of the Russian Presidential Human Rights Council (HRC) in the city Maikop. Local ecologists and journalists told them about the pressure exerted on them by local authorities.

Magazali Endreev, the head of the Public Oversight Commission (POC) of the Kabardino-Balkarian Republic (KBR) has visited in the SIZO (pre-trial prison) of Nalchik a convict Sergey Kaziev, who is holding his hunger strike for more than a month.

Power agents of Cherkessk subjected to hours-long interrogation and beat up a 53-year-old Jehovah's Witness Vladimir Mirzoyan, said Ivan Belenko, the spokesman of Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia. Believers associate this situation with the conflict around the land plot, on which their liturgical building is built.

About 300 units of missile and artillery weapons are involved in the exercise, which started on military ranges in Ingushetia, Chechnya, Dagestan and North Ossetia, and on a military base in South Ossetia, said the press service of the Southern Military District (SMD).

Members of the public Human Rights Centre (HRC) of the Kabardino-Balkarian Republic (KBR) decided to close their organization because of the "refusal of the Russian Ministry of Justice (MoJ) to remove the all-Russian movement 'For Human Rights' from the register of foreign agents."

Yerevan activists, who are protesting against the increase of the electricity tariff, have announced a new series of rallies and marches. Today, they intend to organize a protest action at the president's residence.

On July 14, in the city of Urus-Martan, a rally against terrorism and extremism under the motto "We are united and steadfast" was attended by more than a thousand people, said the city authorities. However, residents of Urus-Martan note that the rally, organized by city authorities, was attended mainly by employees of budget-funded organizations; and the event was formal.

The persons killed on July 14 in a special operation in the Baksan District of the Kabardino-Balkarian Republic (KBR) have been identified as local residents.

The court has sentenced a resident of the Tsuntin District of Dagestan to six years of imprisonment for involvement in an illegal armed formation (IAF).