News

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.

Mayor's office of Yerevan has allowed Tigran Karapetyan, leader of the National party, to hold a meeting and a procession. The meeting will start on May, 5, at 16:00, in an area neighbuoring to Matenadaran.

The exhibition project of modern art "North-Caucasian biannual" will be first opened in the town of Kaspiisk, Dagestan, today.

Yuri Ugryumov, a correspondent of the federal NTV Channel was beaten on April 20 in the city of Budyonnovsk, Stavropol Territory, in the course of filming a report about a rape of a nine-year-old girl. The child was abducted by unidentified persons from the ENT ward of the district hospital of Budyonnovsk and raped.

On April 20, the Big Hall of the Central House of Writers hosted a party in memory of victims of the Armenian genocide of 1915. The event dedicated to the 96th anniversary of the tragic events in Turkey was held by the organization "Russian-Armenian Commonwealth" in cooperation with the Embassy of Armenia in Russia.

Margarita Efremova, a journalist of the newspaper "Yuzhny Federalny" (Southern Federal), was detained in one of Rostov cafes. She is suspected of extorting money from the administration head of the head of the ROVD (District Interior Division) of the Morozov District.

Today, at the court session on the events of October 13, 2005, in Nalchik, one of the defendants, Azamat Akhkubekov, asked the court to ensure his safety in connection with his announced hunger strike, while the defendant Khabas Emkuzhev lost consciousness.

On April 20, the court, which considers the murder case of lawyer Stanislav Markelov and journalist Anastasia Baburova, satisfied the petition of the state prosecution to show to the jury the video record of interrogation of the accused Nikita Tikhonov at the scene of the crime, filmed in November 2009 in Prechistenka Street.

Officials from the Russian Ministry of Defence (MoD) refute the data that residents of the Caucasus will not be drafted into the army. It also reported that the Chechen Republic has much more potential recruits to the army and military schools than required by the delivered quota.

The "Caucasian Knot" correspondent was informed by the Lithuanian journalist Thomas Chivas, who is monitoring the trial, that at the Regional Court of Vilnius, Egle Kusaite, a citizen of Lithuania, accused of preparing a terror act in Russia, was arrested.