News

The brothers Johar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, suspected of organizing a terror act in Boston on April 15 that killed three people, were not the adherents of radical Islam, said their mother Zubeydat Tsarnaeva, and their uncle Ruslan Tsarnaev and their aunt Maret Tsarnaeva.

On April 18, in Azerbaijan, a group of inmates who are serving their life sentences in the Gobustan Prison went on a hunger strike, demanding to reconsider their cases.

In Dagestan, on April 19, after the Friday prayer, Yusup Adjiev, a resident of Khasavyurt and one of public leaders of the Kumyk nation, was shot dead.

In Tskhinvali, Lyudmila Usovich, a local resident, went on a hunger strike. She is the mother of Georgy Zasseev, a citizen of South Ossetia, who is serving his life sentence in Gldani Prison No. 8 in Georgia.

The Investigatory Department of the National Security Service (NSS) of Armenia has completed a preliminary criminal investigation into the attempt on former presidential candidate Paruir Airikyan.

On April 18, the Tbilisi Court of Appeal (TCA) considered the complaint against the court's decision on the claim of Category II invalid Koba Nadiradze, demanding to adapt public transport in the capital of Georgia for disabled people. As reported by Nikoloz Legashvili, who was Nadiradze's advocate, the court dismissed the appeal.

The head of the military police department in Senaki and two military policemen, dismissed from service for misconduct, were detained on April 18 by the prosecutor's office of Adzharia; one more employee was put on the wanted list.

The defence of the suspects accused of murdering the journalist Anna Politkovskaya insists on a jury trial, hoping for "a fair consideration of the case," said Alexei Mikhalchik, an advocate of one of the defendants.

The police have found new facts of illegal activities of a number of former officials of the administration of the Kabardino-Balkarian Republic (KBR), suspected of illegal alienation of national assets.

On April 18, in Ingushetia, search of Dokku Umarov was continued, but because of the actions of the Ingush party the secret special operation to capture him was disrupted, said a high-ranking law enforcement official of Chechnya.

Today, in the state of New Jersey, the police detained a sister of the Chechens, suspected of the bombings at the Boston Marathon, the US media report referring the FBI.

The second suspect of killing Malik Akhmedilov, an employee of the Dagestani newspaper "Hakikat", was detained in Stavropol on April 18, according to the Investigatory Committee of the Russian Federation (ICRF). According to investigators, two residents of Dagestan are suspected of killing the journalist.

On April 17, in the Baku Court of Grave Crimes, at the trial of Hilal Mamedov, the editor-in-chief of the newspaper "Tolyshi Sado", the court listened to the experts, authors of the linguistic examination of the texts written by Mamedov, and of the forensic and technical examination of the carriers used to record the texts. The defence disagreed with the experts and demanded to exclude their opinions from the case files.

On April 17, the Nasimi District Court of Baku under the chairmanship of Judge Elnur Akhmedov considered the appeal lodged by Rashadat Akhundov, a board member of the civil movement "Nida" (Shout), asking to change his custody for home arrest. The court rejected the motion and left him behind bars.

On April 17, the MPs from the "Georgian Dream" accused President Mikhail Saakashvili of spending much money from the secret budget of the Special State Security Service on entertainments, personal whims, as well as gifts. Saakashvili, in his turn, has noted that the financial expenses were aimed at improving the image of Georgia and attraction of investments.

The castle complex Vovnushki in the Djeirakh District of Ingushetia and the mosque named after Akhmad Kadyrov "Heart of Chechnya" in Grozny are the leaders in the multimedia contest-project "Russia-10", designed to select the most popular attractions of the country. Besides, participants of the contest are actively voting for two other attractions in the Southern Russia - the temple "Golden Abode of Buddha Shakyamuni" in Elista and the Mamaev Kurgan with the sculpture "Motherland Calls" in Volgograd.

The "Esquire" magazine has published a list of Russian regions ranked by the number of extremist materials, included in the federal list of the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation by decisions of the local courts. In this rating, Caucasus does not look the most extremist part of Russia. Experts believe that the rating does not reflect the real state of things and sooner indicates the problems in the work of law enforcement bodies than the level of prevalence of extremist moods and publications.

The Investigatory Committee of the Russian Federation (ICRF) has sent the criminal case against five defendants accused of murdering Anna Politkovskaya to the Russian General Prosecutor's Office (GPO) for confirmation of the indictment and transfer to the court.

Today, the Yasamal District Court of Baku has sentenced the human rights activist Vidadi Iskenderov, the head of the NGO "Enhancing Protection of Democracy" and a former "prisoner of conscience", to administrative arrest for 10 days for disobeying the police.

On April 18, the Stavropol Regional Court dismissed the appeal complaint lodged by the former staff members of the OVD (Interior Division) sentenced to 3.5-6 years of imprisonment for abuse and violence against Vyacheslav Merekha, a detained local resident.