News

The Buryat journalists Tatiana Stetsura and Nadezhda Nizovkina, who had written about the deportation of Chechens and Ingushes and later were accused of extremism, rejected their appointed advocates and decided to self-defend at the trial, According to Nadir Fatov, a rights defender from Moscow, the case against the journalists is an experiment, in which the FSB refers any criticism of the authorities to Article 282 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (inciting hatred against a social group).

At the disposition of Russian frontier troops in Yerevan, two guards from Russia were found dead. Earlier, the press service of the Armenian Police had mistakenly treated them as contract servicemen from the Russian military base stationed in Armenia.

The data about the casualties among power agents during the attack of three suicide bombers on the parliament building in Grozny on October 19 were significantly understated, said a source from local law enforcement bodies. According to his version, there were more than 40 wounded and 20 lost law enforcers.

Law enforcement bodies of the Chechen Republic refute the data presented yesterday by Ivan Sydoruk, Deputy Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation, about the activities of illegal armed formations (IAFs) in the region. According to the Chechen Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA), not a single terror act was committed in the first nine months of this year in the territory of the republic.

On October 27, the local Public Chamber hosted a meeting of the officials from the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA), Public Prosecutor's Office, Supreme Court and NGO activists with the members of the Public Observatory Commission (POC) over the places of detention and custody.

Vasily Krivets, 22, leader of the criminal grouping named "Belye Volki" (White Wolves), found guilty of 15 ethnically motivated murders on ethnic grounds, was sentenced by the Moscow City Court to life imprisonment. The second figurant of the case - Dmitri Ufimtsev, who confessed of five murders, was sentenced to 22 years of high security colony.

Issa Khashagulgov, who was detained in Ingushetia on suspicion of organizing the terror act in the central marketplace in Vladikavkaz, is charged under two Articles of the Russian Criminal Code - Article 208 (organization of an illegal armed formation) and Article 222 (firearm storage). No charges of organizing the terror act were presented, said Musa Pliev, Mr Khashagulgov's advocate.

Today in the evening Irina Kolesnikova, wife of the businessman Sergey Kolesnikov, a figurant in the resonant case of the Limited Liability Company (LLC) "Promautomatika-Invest", who held her protest action in front of the territorial administration, was hospitalized. Her husband is kept at the SIZO (pre-trial prison) for more than ten months already.

On October 28, the Kalinin District Court of St Petersburg started considering on the merits the case on beaten school children - natives from the Caucasus.

At its session on October, 27, the European Committee of Liberties, Justice and Internal Affairs approved an agreement between European Union and Georgia on simplification of the procedure of issuing visas for the citizens of the republic signed by the parties on June, 17.

Georgian Ministry of Justice has registered a Fund of persons desiring to return to Abkhazia.

In Krasnodar Irina Kolesnikova, the wife of Sergey Kolesnikov, one of the defendants on the case of limited company "Promavtomatika-Invest", declared a hunger strike in front of the office of Krasnodar regional Administration demanding to release her husband from custody.

In the evening on October 26, businessman Yevgeny Konovalov, one of the defendants in the resonant case of the Limited Liability Company (LLC) "Promautomatika Invest" was released from the Krasnodar SIZO (pre-trial prison) on recognizance not to leave.

Presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan Ilham Aliev and Serzh Sargsyan agreed to exchange prisoners of war, said Russian President Dmitry Medvedev at a press conference after a tripartite meeting with the heads of Azerbaijan and Armenia.

On October 26, a supposed leader of a criminal grouping involved in spread of computer viruses was detained in Armenia. He coordinated the work of one of the world's largest bot-nets named "Bredolab".

Northern Caucasus is staggered by explosions; Southern Caucasus is shocked by earthquakes; Kalmykia gets used to new leadership; residents of Southern Russia undergo census, - look these and other events in the review of the week of October 18-24, 2010, prepared by the "Caucasian Knot".

Yuri Ivaschenko, a photo journalist from Krasnodar, has turned to the Strasbourg Court (European Court of Human Rights - ECtHR) with a complaint that Russia had broken the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), when Sochi customs officer broke his privacy of correspondence.

On October 26 in Grozny, activists of Chechen youth organizations held a mass rally against terror. Several hundreds of young people marched along the main street of the Chechen capital - Putin Avenue - and on the bank of the Sunzha River burnt down portraits of the leaders of the armed underground: Umarov, Zakaev Vadalov and Gakaev.

Local archaeologists have detected a nicely-preserved burial place of the Copper-Stone Age, or Eneolithic. Excavations in the cave complex "Areni-1" in the Vayots Dzor Region are shared by Armenian archaeologists with their colleagues from the US University of California and the Irish University of Kirk.

A participant of the refugees' protest action, who was an eyewitness of the incident, told the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent that Nana Pipiya, who has committed self-immolation in Tbilisi, had long prepared the step, but finally decided to do it after her conversation with some official from the Ministry of Georgia on Refugees' Matters, who had invited her to go to Western Georgia and "eat grass there."