News

The law enforcement authorities of Azerbaijan detained the fourth suspect in beating on 15 June in Baku of Amanda Erickson, an American journalist, and Celia Davis, a British human rights activist. This is Nazim Khuseinov, a resident of Babak District of the Nakhichevan Autonomous Republic (NAR). All four detainees said that they did not know who the girls were and that initially they wanted to get acquainted with them.

Residents of Chechnya hardly trust in the official agencies, which activity is aimed at human rights protection, and out of 200 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) operating in the country only the Human Rights Centre "Memorial" faces the relative confidence of the population. These are the results of a questioning survey conducted by the Caucasian independent magazine "Dosh".

The Parliament of Georgia established an initiative group to create a temporary parliamentary commission to investigate the facts of pressure on journalists. The Georgian MP Dzhondi Bagaturiya announced that at the press briefing on June 29.

On June, 28, a nineteen-year-old resident of Urus-Martan district of Chechnya Yusup Magomedov was sentenced to six years and one month of custody by the court with service of the sentence in a general regime colony for committing an act of terror. The reason for Yusup Magomedov’s joining the gunmen became the murder of his close relative who had also been a participant of armed underground, a representative of law enforcement bodies of Chechnya considers.

On June, 27, the personnel of law enforcement bodies of Chechnya detained a father of two girls, one of them underage, in Shelkovskoy district of the republic for suspicion of having committed a murder. The “Caucasian Knot” correspondent received this news from the republican law enforcement bodies.

Among the points of the agreement on electoral issues signed by the ruling party with several oppositional parties of Georgia there is an increase of the number of seats in Parliament from 150 to 190 along with the increase of the portion of deputies elected on the basis of party lists and paying off one million lari to each party which overcomes the 5% barrier at the parliamentary election. “The New Rights” consider these points the most significant ones.

On June 28, Diana Markosyan, a Bloomberg photojournalist, was detained by border guards at Baku Airport upon arrival, said the spokesman of the Azerbaijani Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) and added that she would be deported to Istanbul.

Today, the Tbilisi City Court has sentenced 15 defendants in the case on terror acts in the Georgian territory, including Evgeniy Borisov, a serviceman of the Russian armed forces stationed in Abkhazia, the press service of the court reports.

Georgia will commemorate the genocide of the Circassian nation committed by the Russian Empire. As reported by Nugzar Tsiklauri, Chairman of the Parliamentary Committee on Diasporas and the Caucasus, it is also planned to create a cultural centre of Circassians.

Eyewitnesses of the blast that occurred at a wedding party in Vladikavkaz on June 25 say that the explosion was strong and totally unexpected. Experts believe that the cause of the incident could be in improper use or defective gas cylinder. The total number of victims of the blast is 55, including 6 children; the condition of 20 of them is grave.

Associates of Ziyavdin Dapaev, one of the followers of the Turkish theologian Said Nursi, who was found guilty in Dagestan of organizing an extremist organization named "Nurdzhular", wrote an open letter to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev asking for help. Dapaev himself filed an appeal complaint against his sentence.

The mother of the teenager, who was beaten in June 2009 by employees of the Shamil ROVD (District Interior Division) of Dagestan, said that she and her son were forced to sign papers that the suffered party had no claims to two out of the three defendants. The defendants themselves, who had lodged a cassation complaint against their sentence, deny the fact of pressure, insisting on their innocence on the case.

Three brothers and natives from Chechnya – Magomed, Issa and Ayub Gafurov, whose participation in the conflict with Cossacks in Zelenokumsk in November 2010 is considered by the court, went on hunger strike, Natalia Shamra, press-secretary of the Soviet District Court of the Stavropol Territory, reported today.

So far, law enforcement bodies of Azerbaijan refrain from comments on possible motives for the beating on June 15 in Baku of the American journalist Amanda Erickson and British human rights defender Celia Davis, despite detention of three suspects of committing this crime.

Two parties in Georgia which insisted on joint negotiations with the ruling party on revision of Electoral code of the country left the “oppositional octad”. “Christian Democrats” and “The New Rights” decided to sign an agreement on electoral issues with the ruling party “United National Movement”.

Prison conditions of Azamat Ahkumbekov, defendant on the case of an attack at Nalchik on October, 13, 2005, may be seriously be injurious to his health. This was a conclusion of Public Committee of Control over institutions of confinement in Kabardino-Balkaria after a visit to the investigative isolation ward of the capital of the republic.

Investigation of the criminal case against a resident of Astrakhan accused of preparation and committing explosions near the buildings of State Traffic Safety Inspectorate and the Academy of the Ministry of Interior Affairs in Volgograd this April “on the grounds of ideological hate” has been accomplished.

The first All-Russian rally of blondes will take place in Sochi on July 23. Its programme includes parade of blondes and laying a stone into foundation of the first Russian restaurant for blondes to be built there.

Broad-scale special operation in Dagestani forests: militants manage to deceive power agents and escape; the 70th anniversary of the start of the Great Patriotic War was marked in all regions of Southern and Northern Caucasus; arrests of oppositionists in Georgia in the context of another putsch statement; failed summit on Karabakh in Kazan, – look these and other events in the review of the week of June 20-26, 2011, prepared by the "Caucasian Knot".

The campaign unleashed against the media by the deputy from the ruling Republican Party of Armenia Tigran Arzakantsyan is discrediting the understanding of the freedom of speech, said Ovannes Galadjyan, editor-in-chief of the newspaper named "Iravunk" (Law), who treated the MP's lawsuit as absurd and groundless.