News

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."

The complaint, prepared by the Committee Against Torture, was forwarded to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in Strasbourg on behalf of 75 applicants from Chechnya. They include both close relatives of the casualties and the persons who were seriously injured as a result of the missile attack and bombing of the village of Elistanzhi, Vedeno District of the Chechen Republic, by Russian Air Forces on October 7, 1999.

The Azerbaijani journalist Einullah Fatullaev, who spent over 4 years in prison, and who was released on May 26, intends to continue his professional activities.

The Ambassadors to Georgia of the United States and the European Union - John Bass and Philip Dimitrov, respectively, - believe that the crackdown at night on May 26 of the unsanctioned rally of the "People's Assembly" was carried out legally; however, riot policemen were applying disproportionate force to the situation.

Today, Sergey Evloev, 19, a resident of Makhachkala, who had stated earlier that he was abducted by local law enforcers, turned for help to the commission under the President of Dagestan engaged in assisting the persons, who have decided to stop their terrorist and extremist activities, in adapting to peaceful life.

Susanna Dudieva, leader of the "Beslan Mothers", has moved a version that the murder of the National Poet of North Ossetia-Alania Shamil Dzhigkaev was caused by his poem critical of pilgrims from Chechnya and Ingushetia. However, the Ingush authorities called on not to make hasty conclusions.

Today, on May 27, Sasun Mikaelyan, one of the most famous commanders of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, was set free from the penal institution "Prisoners' Hospital".

A non-governmental organization "Grass Roots" filed an application of holding a picket in defense of convicted human rights activist Pavel Cherevatov in Krasnodar. The Mayor's office refused granting the application. The organizers consider this refusal groundless and do not give up their plans of holding the action of protest.

According to the version of the Ministry of Interior Affairs, Minister of Public Health of North Osetia has inflicted damage on the budget to a sum of one million rubles.

One of the leaders of the "Georgian Party" Levan Gachechiladze is sure that there were much more victims of the dispersal of the oppositionists' meeting in Tbilisi than it was officially reported.

On May 31 - the Day of Smoking-Quitting - activists of the "Young Guard" will appear in gas masks and offer all the wishing volunteers to give blood samples for determination of the level of carbon monoxide (CO) in the organism.

The Pervomaiskiy District Court has ordered the city administration of Rostov-on-Don to sanction the "Strategy-31" action in defence of Article 31 of the Russian Constitution, which stipulates the freedom of assembly, in those months as the applicants will indicate. According to the organizer of this rally Pavel Nagibin, the court has consistently recognized the unlawfulness of the refusal by the city administration to sanction the "Strategy-31" rallies on October 31, 2010, and January 31 this year.

The United States, which had earlier put Dokku Umarov, leader of "Imarat Kavkaz", on the list of international terrorists, are ready to pay remuneration of five million US dollars for information about his whereabouts, says the joint Russian-American declaration on combating terrorism.

The Armenian National Assembly has approved the draft law "On Amnesty", initiated by the President of the country Serzh Sargsyan, when 91 MPs voted for it, and one MP abstained. The amnesty was announced in connection with the 20th anniversary of independence of the Republic of Armenia to be marked on September 21.

The international organizations Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Reporters Without Borders (RWB) have treated the force used by Georgian police to disperse the demonstration in Tbilisi as excessive and disproportionate.

Today Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliev signed an order today to pardon 89 prisoners; among those pardoned is Einullah Fatullaev, editor-in-chief and founder of the newspapers "Real Azerbaijan" and "Daily Azerbaijan.

As ruled by Judge Natalia Larina, the trial of blogger Alexei Dudko would continue at the Taganka District Court in Moscow on June 1.