News

Lors Dukaev, 25, a Russian citizen and a native of Chechnya was found guilty of terrorism by a court in Denmark.

The Moscow City Court will consider the murder case of anti-fascist Ilya Dzhaparidze by means of a jury. It was decided on May 24 at the preliminary hearing on the case.

Last respects ceremony towards President of Abkhazia Sergey Bagapsh will be held in Moscow Cultural Center of the Ministry of Defense at eleven o'clock in the morning today. A representative of Press service of the Cultural Center confirmed this information.

A restaurant in Makhachkala located in the territory of the town's beach, at the coastline of the Caspian Sea, was fired upon from self-firers at night of May, 29, one person was wounded.

An officer of law enforcement bodies was killed at night of May, 29, in the town of Kizlyar, Dagestan. The attacker managed to escape.

A member of a rock group "Dead Dolphins" from Grozny Alexander Ponomarev was shot down in Moscow tonight.

The investigation on the case of murder of "Spartak" fan Egor Sviridov in Moscow considers that the scuffle which resulted in the fan's death was initiated by natives of the Caucasus and the conflict emerged from "the difference of behaviour codes". The defendants have studied the materials of the investigation and the indictment is being prepared for referring to Public prosecutor's office for validation, Committee of Inquiry of the Russian Federation (CIR) reported.

The Eighth International Film Festival "Golden Apricot", which will be held on July 10-17 this year, has already received more than 600 entries from 57 countries worldwide.

At the playwrights' festival "Rostov Readings" held in Rostov-on-Don on May 25-27, apart from the play "Prebiotics" by Vladimir Golyshev, the play by the playwright Anna Donatova "Cat Is Guilty of My Sexuality" was also forbidden to demonstration. According to the author, it was cancelled at the last minute.

On May 27, an opposition activist Ara Ovannisyan, convicted on the case of the events of March 1-2, 2008, in Yerevan, was released under the amnesty from the penal institution "Sevan".

High concentration of dust in the air has become one of the most acute problems for residents of the capital of South Ossetia, after they started replacing underground utilities. City authorities lack cleaning equipment to combat the dust; while local residents have to put on respiratory masks.

On May 28, the Office of the Ombudsman of Georgia published a list of 152 persons detained during the May protest actions, found in 17 IVSs (temporary isolation facilities) of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA), located both in Tbilisi and in regions of the country.

Today, a protest rally against the violence of the ruling regime was held in Tbilisi, in front of the Parliament of Georgia, where on May 26 the police dispersed the opposition rally.

Today, Azerbaijan marks its Day of the Republic - on May 28, 1918, the Azerbaijani Democratic Republic (ADR) was proclaimed, which was the first republic in the Muslim world.

Two construction workers from Uzbekistan suffered in Krasnaya Polyana in Sochi. A shell explosion tore away an arm of one of them and caused minor injuries to the other.

At its session held on Friday, the oppositional Public Chamber of Azerbaijan made a decision to hold a new rally on June 19.

In Georgia, the Tbilisi City Court has sentenced Vakhtang Maisuradze and Georgi Lapiashvili, who were detained on May 27 on suspicion that they threw chocolate at Mikhail Saakashvili, when the latter was in the theatre. Maisuradze was sentenced to three months in jail; Lapiashvili was fined by 300 US dollars.

Asiyat (Julia) Babaeva, a resident of the town of Raduzhnoe, Tyumen Region, informed the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent that her husband Umalat Babaev, a native of Dagestan, from yesterday did not answer telephone calls; and his whereabouts are unknown. Along with him, Samur Kurbanov, a friend of the family, also disappeared.

As reported by Arsen Babayan, press secretary of the Criminal-Executive Department of the Armenian Ministry of Justice, Nikol Pashinyan, a supporter of the Armenian opposition and editor-in-chief of the "Aikakan Zhamanak", was released under the May 27 amnesty.

Leaders of three Norwegian human rights organizations - the Norwegian Helsinki Committee, the Rafto Foundation and the Foundation for the Human Rights House - sent a letter to the Norwegian Crown Prince Hokon Magnus asking him to abandon his trip to Azerbaijan to participate in the International Exhibition and Conference "Caspian Oil and Gas" to be held on June 6-7 in Baku. According to human rights advocates, by his visit Prince Hokon will express "undeserved recognition of President Aliev's regime."