News

Mayor of Sochi Anatoly Pakhomov has banned sale and consumption of beer closer than 100 meters from entrances to railway stations, airports, sports objects and wholesale food markets. The statement came into force on October 27.

On October 31, human rights activists from Novorossisk held a picket dated to the Black Sea Day. The picket took place despite the ban of the city administration.

Tinamagomed Ramazanov, 34, Imam of a rural mosque, was shot dead in the evening on November 1 by unidentified persons in Bavtugai village, Kizilyurt District of Dagestan.

Ali Khasanov, Emir of flatland Chechnya and close ally of Chechen militants' leader Doku Umarov, was killed in Grozny. According to Chechen Interior Minister Ruslan Alkhanov, President Ramzan Kadyrov took his personal part in the special operation.

The phenomenon of the nine-month-old Ali Yakubov from the Dagestan village of Krasnooktiabrskoe, on whose body phrases from the Koran appear, are seriously discussed by local representatives of Muslim clergy and politicians. The house of the Yakubovs is visited by pilgrims who wish to see the wonderful child and touch him.

In a special operation held in the Sergokalin District of Dagestan four members of illegal armed formations were killed, as reported by the local ROVD.

Tourism was on decline in mid-season in Karachai-Circassia; however, demand for winter rest in Dombai and Arkhyz is already noticeable. Kazim Uzdenov, director general of the "Everest" travel company, told about it in his conversation with the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent.

On October 30, the Georgian opposition notified the Tbilisi Mayoralty about the protest actions planned for November 7. The organizers hope to invoke hundreds of participants.

In Makhachkala, the capital of Dagestan, five swine flu patients (virus А/Н1N1) have been revealed, one of them was hospitalized, as reported by the Republic's branch of "Rospotrebnadzor" (Federal Agency for Consumer Supervision).

Every year on October 30, Abkhazia marks the memory of Stalin's victims. According to historians, in 1930-1940s a thousand persons were repressed in Abkhazia, first of all, intellectuals and the political elite.

Ketevan Bekauri, advocate of Tsotne Gamsakhurdia, son of the first president of Georgia Zviad Gamsakhurdia, has appealed against the two-month pre-trial custody of her trial.

On October 30, the Day of Political Prisoners, Moscow held a rally in defence of victims of political prosecutions in Russia. Despite cold weather, over two hundred persons came to take part in the event. The protesters demanded to immediately release the "prisoners of conscience" and reconsider the cases of all political prisoners.

After the press conference of the head of the Moscow Helsinki Group Liudmila Alekseeva, assistant of the President of Ingushetia Musa Pliev and the leader of the Ingush opposition Magomed Khazbiev on the current situation in Ingushetia in the context of the recent murder of Maksharip Aushev, its participants found that they were shadowed.

Georgiy Tugushi, Ombudsman of Georgia, has characterized the situation in the sphere of human rights in the country as grave. This is stated in his first report, for the first half of 2009, placed in the web site of the Ombudsman.

The situation with human rights and persecutions of journalists in Russia has deserved a special report, prepared by the respective profile committee of the United Nations. The results of the work of the experts of the UN Human Rights Committee were reported today in Geneva. Russian law enforcement bodies operating in the Chechen Republic and other subjects of Northern Caucasus were subjected to the sharpest criticism.

Today in Yerevan, on the Day of Political Prisoners, which for the first time was marked in the former USSR 35 years ago, a protest action was held at the building of the State Public Prosecutor's Office with a demand to release the remaining 17 political prisoners.

Today, the Institute on Reporters' Freedom and Safety (IRFS) has made a statement, which regards the sudden inspection of the Institute initiated by the Ministry of Justice of Azerbaijan to be a "start of a new campaign of frank pressure."

Rizvan Abusufyanov, a resident of Shamkhal-Station, Kirov District of Makhachkala, told the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent that his daughter Patimat Abusufyanova, a pupil of the sixth form, was sent away from school today because she is wearing an Islamic headscarf (hijab). Abusufyanov said that school director Patimat Magomedova was behind the incident.

Georgia: court refuses to release Tsotne Gamsakhurdia for the period of investigation

On October 29, a source from law enforcement bodies reported that employees of the Moscow GUVD were searching a teenager of 14, kidnapped from the reception ward of the Morozov Children's Hospital.