News

In the village of Shushiya of the Novolak District of Dagestan, seven women continue their hunger strike with the demand to allocate land shares. Three other protesters have stopped their hunger strike because of deterioration of their health.

The detention of the leader of the NGO "Law and Order" in the town of Goychay located 150 kilometres west of Baku was reported by Oktai Gyulalyev, the head of the Public Alliance "Azerbaijan without political prisoners", who referred to the family of the rights defender.

The Krasnodar Regional Court has ruled to consider the criminal case of Khaiser Dzhemilev, the son of Mustafa Dzhemilev, an MP of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine and the former head of the Crimean Tatar Mejlis, by means of a jury. A preliminary hearing is scheduled for March 3.

Gadjimurad Omarov, the Chairman of the Board of the Dagestani Branch of the "Spravedlivaya Rossiya" (Fair Russia) Party, has been hospitalized to the N. Sklifosovsky Research Institute in Moscow. Doctors plan to operate on his collarbone.

In Dagestan, the court session on the case of the terror act committed in the house of Sheikh Said Afandi al-Chirkawi is postponed to February 26. The court has made such a decision to provide the new advocate with time to examine the materials.

The suspected militants killed last night in a shootout at a police post in the Khasavyurt District of Dagestan, have been pre-identified.

On February 23, the State Museum of the History of GULAG in Moscow hosted a memorial party dedicated to the 71st anniversary of the deportation of Chechens and Ingushes. There, the archival documents were presented, which cover the life in special settlements; and a film about the deportation was screened.

One policeman and two alleged attackers were killed near a police post in the Khasavyurt District of Dagestan. Another law enforcer was wounded.

After the devaluation of the national currency – the manat, credit cards of Baku residents are blocked; and many shops are closed, said Eyub Guseinov, the chairman of the Union of Free Consumers.

Relatives of the Avetisyan family, massacred in Gyumri, have occupied the office of Raffi Aslanyan, the Public Prosecutor of the Shirak Region, demanding a meeting or a telephone talk with the General Public Prosecutor (GPP) of Armenia. Aslanyan has left his workplace.

Arthur Afyan, a contract soldier of the 102nd Russian military base in Gyumri, has disappeared. His whereabouts cannot be established for the third day already.

Collapse of political oppositional troika in Armenia; beating up of Dagestani leader of "Spravedlivaya Rossiya" in Makhachkala; sharp devaluation of national currency by Azerbaijani Central Bank; emigration from Russia of Mikhail Savva, conditionally convicted in Krasnodar; election of a new head of Astrakhan; entry into force of four ECtHR's decision on complaints of residents of Chechnya, – see the review of these and other events in the Caucasus during the week of February 16-22, 2015, prepared by the "Caucasian Knot".

Today is 71 years after the date of the start of the operation known as "Chechevitsa" (Lentils), which took place during the Stalin's deportation of Chechens and Ingushes. Chechen authorities will not hold any official commemoration of deportation victims.

The health status of hunger-strikers in Gldani Prison is deteriorating, while authorities pay no attention to their demands, their relatives assert. The Georgian legislation on amnesty and pardon violates the rights of life convicts, said some NGO activists.

A resident of the settlement of Stary in Grozny has reported that in early February two young men left the settlement to join the underground.

During the week from February 16 to February 22, 2015, the armed conflict in Northern Caucasus brought no victims. These are the results of the calculations run by the "Caucasian Knot" based on its own materials and information from other open sources.

In Azerbaijan, Gyunel Hasanli, the daughter of Jamil Hasanli, the leader of the oppositional National Council of Democratic Forces (NCDF), has been sentenced to 1.5 years in prison on charges of committing a traffic accident.

Ruslan Kutaev, the head of the Assembly of North-Caucasian Nations, sentenced to prison, is serving his term in the Chernokozovo colony in the Naur District of Chechnya.

Gadjimurad Omarov, the chairman of the regional branch of the "Spravedlivaya Rossiya" (Fair Russia) Party, who was attacked and beaten in Dagestan has left for Moscow via Chechnya.

250 inmates kept in a high security colony in the Kabardino-Balkarian Republic (KBR) have gone on a hunger strike in protest against the inhuman treatment of two inmates, their relatives report. However, the colony bosses state that the information about the hunger strike is false.