News

On the eve of the upcoming May accreditation of tourist operators for the Hajj, different viewpoints are expressed. The governmental commission on religious communities believes that travel agencies and mediation companies are the perpetrators of the problems encountered by pilgrims. The board of muftis puts part of the blame on pilgrims as such.

On April 22, law enforcers of Dagestan and Chechnya conducted an operation and detained three female residents of Khasavyurt who tried to sell a newborn baby.

In front of the Central Marketplace in Moskovskaya Street of Sochi, a picket is being held from 2 to 4 p.m., organized by Evgeniy Zakharov, a member of the initiative group for protection of the resort city against skyscrapers.

The documentary "Barzakh" telling about facts of torture and kidnappings in Chechnya, which was presented at film festivals in Lithuania, Switzerland and Spain, aims to tell the world about the situation in today's Chechnya, the Lithuanian film director Mantas Kvedaravichyus told the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent.

At night on April 22, in the village of Khasanya, a suburb of Nalchik, unidentified persons set fire to a grocery store, which burned down completely. Nobody was hurt.

As reported by the State Committee for Restoration Projects in South Ossetia, the funding of housing construction in Tskhinvali has been suspended; it is unknown when it may be resumed.

On April 22, Makhachkala hosted a rally of residents of the Tabasaran District of Dagestan and public activists. The action in defence of law enforcers was about 600 persons strong.

Yesterday, on April 21, a meeting was to take place of relatives of the Georgian sailors, kept for over eight months by Somalia pirates, with the head of the government of Adzharia Levan Varshalomidze; however, it was reappointed on April 27.

During the week from April 11 to April 17, at least 17 persons were killed and at least 15 more were wounded in the glowing armed conflict in Northern Caucasus. These are the results of calculations made by the "Caucasian Knot" based on its own materials and information from other open sources.

Respect for human rights and the rule of law in Northern Caucasus are prerequisites for ensuring peace and stability in the region, said Oleg Orlov, head of the Human Rights Centre "Memorial", at a press conference on human rights in Chechnya.

Employees of the Department of Constitutional Security of the Georgian Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA) have detained Avtandil Mestvirishvili, Deputy Governor of the region Shida Kartli (Eastern Georgia), on bribery charges. No details have been disclosed so far.

For celebrations of the Orthodox Easter, Chechnya expects arrival of plenty of its former residents. A special working group has been set up to cope with all the activities associated with this holiday.

On April 27, the Moscow Cultural Centre "Pokrovskie Vorota" will host a book presentation, written by Zoya Svetova, a Russian human rights activist, a publicist and journalist, about the trials of the scientist Igor Sutyagin, convicted as a spy, and of the Chechen woman Zara Murtazalieva, convicted for terrorism.

As reported by the press office of the Territorial Prosecutor's Office, several officials of the Krasnodar Mayoralty have repeatedly violated the law, while forming the budget, distributing and using the budgetary funds, placing orders on the purchase of goods, works and services for municipal needs, and in managing and disposing municipal property, including land resources.

As reported by the Investigatory Committee of the Russian Federation (ICRF), the chief physician of the hospital in the city of Budyonnovsk, Stavropol Territory, where a 9-year-old girl was raped, is accused of a failure to ensure the proper guarding of his hospital, which allowed the criminal to get into it.

The Special Investigatory Service (SIS) in charge of investigating the dispersal of the mass opposition rallies on March 1, 2008, has issued a statement urging people to help in investigating the events of those days. The service decided to revise the investigation of the "March 1" case.

In the village of Kidero, Tsuntin District of Dagestan, law enforcers conducted searches in the houses of Magomed Abdulkhalikov, Shakhban Magomedov and Magomed Magomedov and took the young men away to some unknown place. Currently, their whereabouts are unknown. On April 20, 2011, Mukhtar Kamaludinovich Zhabuev, a resident of the village, submitted a respective application to the Human Rights Centre (HRC) "Memorial".

Doctors have discharged all the pupils of kindergarten No. 7 of the city of Apsheronsk, Krasnodar Territory who were hospitalized with a suspected infectious disease, said an employee of the press service of the district administration. The kindergarten remains closed; its head was fired; and district doctors are visiting the homes and examine all the pre-school children who visited the kindergarten.

Fifteen people got injured as a result of a collision of three cars. It has been the biggest road accident in the republic during the past several months.

National Anti-Terrorist Committee reports that one of the people killed during a special operation in Chechnya was an Arab hireling, chief emissary of "al-Qaeda" under the alias "Moganned". The other killed person was identified as resident of Grozny by name of Sultygov.