News

In Chechnya, the Prosecutor's Office is seeking to recognize the website named "Ministry of Truth of the Russian Federation" as extremist, in connection with the publication of the audio and video materials put by the Russian Ministry of Justice into the list of extremist materials.

On June 7, the Sumgait City Court held a preliminary hearing on the case of Dashgyn Melikov, an activist of the Popular Front Party of Azerbaijan (PFPA), chaired by Judge Agil Abbasov. The defence moved a number of motions. However, since the prosecutor was not ready to express his attitude to the motions, the trial was postponed till June 11.

The Armenian government has decided to pay lump-sum compensations to socially vulnerable residents of 23 villages of the Armavir Region, who were most affected by hail. The total amount of lump-sum payments makes 80 million drams, or about 193,000 US dollars.

On June 7, the Investigating Department for Dagestan of the Investigating Committee of the Russian Federation (ICRF) presented to Ilmutdin Gamzaev, the head of the municipal formation "Kayakent District", an accusation under the "abuse of office" and "service forgery". Gamzaev's advocate claims that his client's actions contain no crime attributes.

On June 7, Buberd Maremov, the advocate of Islam Beshkurov, who was detained in the Kabardino-Balkarian Republic (KBR), filed an appeal to the Supreme Court of the KBR against the ruling of the District Court of Baksan to arrest his client for two months.

The investigation of the criminal case opened against the journalist Nikolai Yarst, accused of illegal drug possession, is over and ready for approval by the public prosecutor and further sending to the court. The "Caucasian Knot" correspondent was informed about it by the defendant's lawyer Alexander Popkov.

During a one-day trip to the village of Didi, Khurvaleti, Gugutiantkari and Ditsi of the Shida Kartli Region of Georgia, organized by the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MFA) of Georgia, members of the Parliament, diplomatic missions and international organizations got acquainted with the problems of the residents of the villages separated by the new border.

The Krasnodar Regional Court has cancelled the decision on coercive measures of medical nature in regard to the ex-militiaman Ilya Galkin, accused of committing a series of explosions in Sochi in 2008-2009, and sent the defendant to a new forensic-psychiatric examination, said a source from the Territorial Prosecutor's Office.

Villagers from Mrgashat, Armavir Region of Armenia, where on May 12 a huge hail killed the crops, said that the seeds provided by the authorities are not enough to compensate for the damages and pay back the loans.

The Tbilisi City Court has fined two activists of the NGO "Free Zone" for their insulting cries about Russian president Vladimir Putin during a protest action against actions of Russian border guards on the border with South Ossetia.

Valentina Tedeeva, the chief physician of the maternity ward of the Republic's ClinicalHospital, accused of selling a child, was put from custody into home arrest because of her health problems, Eduard Gusov, an assistant to the head of the Investigating Department for North Ossetia.

The trial on the case of Vazgen Khachikyan, the former head of the welfare service, accused of a fraud with the money of the Pension Fund, has been rescheduled for June 13 due to the illness of one of the defendants – Ovannes Grigoryan, the former head of the division of payments of the above welfare service.

On June 10 and 11, 117 Armenian lawyers are going to hold a two-day strike in protest against the working methods of the Court of Cassation (CoC), in particular, against the "arbitrariness in the application of a number of laws." The aim of the strike is to draw the attention of all the branches of power to the unacceptable practices of the Armenian CoC, including the use of "double standards".

In Astrakhan, power engineers failed to connect the house of the Porfiriev family, located at No. 14 in Amurskaya Street, because of the counteraction of the developer, said Regina Porfirieva. The developer did not allow laying the cable, a source from the "Astrakhanenergo" has confirmed.

On June 6, Nils Mujzhnieks, the Commissioner for Human Rights of the Council of Europe (CoE), and Dunja Mijatovic, the OSCE Representative on the Freedom of the Media, issued a joint statement, in which they expressed their serious concern over the approval by the President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliev of amendments to the legislation, spreading the criminal liability for defamation over the online environment.

On June 6, in Krasnodar, the police confiscated 31,000 copies of the newspaper-leaflet "For Navalny" from activists of the regional branch of the "People's Alliance" Party. The police found that the texts of the edition are discrediting the country's top officials.

The death of a child from meningoencephalitis in Rostov-on-Don could be a result of negligence of health workers, investigators believe. According to them, the parents of the perished child "were repeatedly visited by paediatricians": an ambulance came; however, only after a resolute request of the mother the child was hospitalized.

The Chief Department of the Russia's Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA) for the Southern Federal District (SFD) is investigating two more criminal cases against five Jehovah's Witnesses in Taganrog, suspected of extremism, the lawyer Anton Bogdanov, who is representing two of the believers, told the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent. The above Chief Department has confirmed this information.

In the evening on June 5, Bagaudin Magomedov, a resident of Yuzhno-Sukhokumsk, was detained by employees of the GOVD (City Interior Division) and charged with illegal possession of explosives and firearms, said his relative Rasul Magomedov.

Rashad Gasanov, an activist of the civil movement "Nida" (Shout) will stay in custody under decision of the above court. He was arrested on March 14 and is charged under Article 228.3 (illegal possession of firearms, explosives and devices within an organized criminal grouping) of the Criminal Code of Azerbaijan.