News

Ruslan Gereev, Deputy Director General and the editor of the politics section of the newspaper "Nastoyascheye Vremya" (Present Time), who was attacked by unidentified persons on April 24, says that the investigatory committee has not yet initiated a case on his beating. The journalist is sure that the attack on him was directly related to his professional work.

Today in Baku, the police did not allow activists of youth branches of political parties and youth organizations of Azerbaijan to hold a commemoration of the victims of the massacre committed in the Azerbaijan State Oil Academy (ASOA) three years ago.

The investigators who run the inquiry into the murder of Gulnara Gamzatova, a Dagestani teacher, have indicted a wrong person, her relatives assert. The Department for Dagestan of the Investigatory Committee of the Russian Federation (ICRF) says that relatives' claims are groundless; the alleged killer was put on the search list; and Gamzatova's ex-husband was detained and accused of incitement to murder.

On April, 29, representatives of the so-called "traditional" and "nontraditional" Islam gathered in the central mosque of Makhachkala for common dinner prayer. After the end of the prayer with the participation of over 500 people a meeting was held during which an agreement of enlightenment of residents of the republic on different branches of Islam was achieved.

At least 16 persons became victims of armed confrontation in Northern Caucasus during the period from April, 23, to April, 29. 14 out them perished and two got wounded. These are the totals of calculation by the "Caucasian Knot" based on its own materials and information from other open sources.

The exhibition "People and Fate" by photographer Marco Kokic, organized by the Tskhinvali-based office of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), presents images of individuals – refugees and orphans – victims of the military conflicts.

On April 26, Moscow hosted a presentation of the multilingual social network Dudu.com, where the author of the idea was Alibek Ilyasov, a native of Dagestan.

At the recent meeting with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, the members of the Human Rights Board handed him a letter asking to use all his influence to promote liberation in Belarus of Ales Bialiatski, Vice-President of the FIDH (International Federation for Human Rights) and the head of the Human Rights Centre "Viasna" (Spring).

Three persons, detained in Dagestan – Ibragim Saipulaev and his guests Gasanov and Murzabekov – were sent for no reason to SIZO (pre-trial prison) No. 1 of the city of Stavropol, where they receive threats, asserts Ibragim's brother Shamil Saipulaev.

In Yerevan, the Cafesjian Centre for the Arts has hosted a screening of the documentary "Wounds of Karabakh" by the Bulgarian TV journalist Tsvetana Paskaleva; the film tells about disasters of the Karabakh War.

Sergey Tsepovyaz, accused of concealing the killing of 12 people in the village of Kuschevskaya, Krasnodar Territory, has fully admitted his guilt. His case will be considered under a special procedure, said Vladimir Markin, the spokesman of the Investigatory Committee of the Russian Federation (ICRF).

The meeting of tenants of No. 66 in Gagarin Street of Sochi has stated that their house is collapsing because of the construction of the road parallel to Kurortny Avenue. The tenants threaten to block the highway, should the authorities fail to take immediate measures.

On April 27, residents of the hostel located at No. 9a Zholudev Street in the Traktorozavodsky District of Volgograd, held a picket trying to draw attention of the authorities to the disastrous state of their house. The action was about 10 persons strong.

The political coalition named "Georgian Dream" and headed by billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili plans to start the election campaign by a large action in Tbilisi on May 26-27.

The bodies of the family members of Dmitry Chudakov, the commander of Nizhny Novgorod special troops, killed in 2009 in the Rostov Region, will be exhumed for further examination.

The defenders of the Bersirovs, whose family members died in autumn of 2008 in a road accident near Maikop, have appealed to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) with a demand to nullify the decision to stop the criminal case and collect from the Russian Federation a moral compensation in the amount of two thousand euros. This was reported by Rafael Bersirov, a relative of the perished family members.

In recent years, Azerbaijan has made progress in satisfying the needs of approximately 600,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) forced out of Nagorno-Karabakh and seven adjacent regions by ethnic Armenians almost twenty years ago, says the report of the International Crisis Group (ICG) "Burden of Azerbaijani IDPs: Search for Solution".

In the morning on April 25, the temporary accommodation centre (TAC) in the city of Karabulak in Ingushetia was visited by a group of local officials, who demanded from the tenants of "Promzhilbaza" to free the territory within three days. The residents are in shock and assert that they have nowhere to go. The officials, in their turn, claim that the tenants who have the refugee status will not be evicted.

Nuraed Erizhokov, a resident of the city of Prokhladny, Kabardino-Balkaria, has addressed human rights defenders asking to help to restore his rights violated by power agents. The man alleges that policemen planted a grenade into his pocket and then tortured him into confession of complicity with militants and possession of weapons.

On April 26, the village of Razdolnoye in Sochi hosted an assembly of about one hundred citizens, who demanded to stop the Olympic and commercial construction in their territory.