News

A local woman told the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent today that law enforcers offered the residents of the settlement of Vremenny, Untsukul District of Dagestan, to leave their settlement. According to her story, residents refused to do it, fearing for their property.

On September 26, representatives of the Human Rights Centre (HRC) "Memorial" and Human Rights Watch (HRW) tried to visit the settlement of Vremenny to see what was happening there in terms of human rights, but the power agents at the checkpoint at the crossroads leading to Vremenny and the village of Gimry village refused to let rights defenders to move farther, says the HRC's release received today by the "Caucasian Knot".

The PACE fall session opened on September 29 in Strasbourg is to hold so-called "side-event" titled "Unprecedented Repressions in Azerbaijan". This has been told today to the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent by Khadidja Ismailova, an Azerbaijani investigative journalist, who is to take part in the forthcoming discussions.

During the week of September 22-28, 2014, at least two persons were killed in the armed conflict in Northern Caucasus. One person was wounded. These are the results of calculations made by the "Caucasian Knot" based on its own materials and information from other open sources. The death toll includes one suspected member of the armed underground and one civilian, both of them in Dagestan.

On September 28, the city of Mineralnye Vody (Minvody) hosted a protest action, during which the protestors demanded to conduct a fair investigation into the fact of beating of a man at the Central District Hospital of the city. The protestors were informed by the local deputy police chief that two-thirds of the total number of the fighters had been detained.

Hurricane in Southern Russia, flooding hundreds of houses of local residents and killing several people; inauguration of new President of Abkhazia; conviction of key witness in one of cases against dismissed Mayor of Makhachkala Said Amirov, – see the review of these and other events in the Caucasus during the week of September 22-28, 2014, prepared by the "Caucasian Knot".

Today, the cities of the South Federal District (SFD) and the North-Caucasian Federal District (NCFD) of the Russian Federation have held actions of nationwide solidarity for the preservation of the Central Black Earth Economic Region and against the decision on mining of nickel in the Khopyor River area.

On September 26, in the Volgograd Region, policemen removed a 43-year-old man without any ID from the bus route "Makhachkala-Moscow". The detainee claims that he spent the past 18 years in slavery in Dagestan, where his passport was taken away from him. After the man gave his explanations to law enforcers, they released him, and he went to Moscow by hitchhiking. This was reported by the volunteer organization "Alternative".

The "Rosfinmonitoring" (the Russian Federal Service for Financial Monitoring) has included Krasnodar oppositionists Darya Polyudova, Vyacheslav Martynov and Pyotr Lyubchenkov, who intended to hold a protest action against the Russia's policy towards Ukraine, in the official list of terrorists and extremists.

On September 27, about 50 residents of buildings located in Park and Constitution Streets in Sochi held one more gathering with the demand to stop the construction of high-rise buildings in their residential area.

On September 27, in Volgograd, a mourning action in memory of the dead residents of Donbas was held in front of the reserve museum "Stalingrad Battle". Participants of the mourning event called "Donetsk: innocent victims" demanded to conduct an international investigation into the killings of civilians in Ukraine, the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent reports.

The participants of the hearings held in Yerevan "Possible Impact of Ukrainian Crisis on Southern Caucasus" stated that the development in Ukraine acquire traits of conflicts in Southern Caucasus.

In Dagestan, on Saturday, the legal regime of the counterterrorist operation (CTO) was introduced in connection with searches of suspected militants at the junction of the Gumbet and Kazbek Districts, said the Operative Headquarters of the Russia's National Antiterrorist Committee (NAC) in Dagestan.

The units of the Russian Ministry for Emergencies (MfE) are brought to the high alert state, because of the risk of showers and mudslides in Northern Caucasus, said the MfE.

The Supreme Court (SC) of the Kabardino-Balkarian Republic (KBR) has found Biaslan Djaboev, who was killed in February 2012, innocent under the incriminated article of "participation in illegal armed formation (IAF)". Under all other indictment points brought against Djaboev, he was found guilty killed, said the advocate Tatiana Psomiadi.

As of Saturday morning, the whereabouts of Sakhratula Magomedov, a resident of Kizilyurt, who was kidnapped in the evening on September 25, has not been established, said Aisha Selimkhanova, an employee of the Dagestani Regional Public Organization (DRPO) "Pravozaschita" (Advocacy).

The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has sent a request to Russian authorities concerning the case of a participant of the liquidation of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) accident from the KBR.

The criticism of Azerbaijani authorities, voiced out by President Barack Obama in connection with obstacles to NGOs' activities may tell positively on solution of existing problems, NGO activists hope. At the same time, the official Baku has rejected the criticism from Washington.

On September 24-26, residents of the micro-district KSM in Sochi held three rallies, attended by some 200 people, who spoke against the build-up of the water-protection zone on the left bank of the Sochi River.

Relatives of Sakhratulla Magomedov, who assert that he was kidnapped on September 25 by unidentified persons, have gathered at the Inter-District OVD (Interior Division) in the city of Kizilyurt.