News

The gas main Iran-Armenia will start operating quite soon. With the aim to clarify all the details of the agreements reached earlier by the two countries, Armenia will be visited by Seed Reza Kasaizade, Director of the Iran National Gas Company, as reported by the local Ministry of Energy.

At the inauguration ceremony, Anatoly Pakhomov, the newly elected Mayor of Sochi has taken an oath of commitment to city dwellers.

The defendants on the case of the mass murder on April 30 at the Azerbaijani State Oil Academy (ASOA) have no complaints of their custody conditions and any pressure exerted on, two of them have pled guilty. The "Caucasian Knot" correspondent was informed about it by Elchin Bekhbudov, head of the Azerbaijani Committee against Torture.

The Human Rights Watch (HRW) has called the authorities of Georgia to hold investigation into the facts of attacks on supporters of the opposition in the course of the protest actions held in Tbilisi with the demand of President Mikhail Saakashvili's resignation.

On May 12, the Coordination Commission of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) arrived to Sochi with the aim to assess the preparation process of 2014 Winter Olympiad. From the moment of awarding Sochi with the title of Olympic capital it is already the second visit of the IOC commission to the Black Sea resort; and it will last till May 14.

On April 28, in the centre of the capital of Chechnya, armed persons in black uniform kidnapped a young man and violently took him away in an unknown direction.

The Georgian opposition, which demands Mikhail Saakashvili's resignation, plans to declare the general disobedience all over the country. This was stated by Gubaz Sanikidze, one of the leaders of the National Forum, at the rally near the building of the Parliament of Georgia.

The Special Investigatory Service of Armenia denies the conclusions of the fact-finding group on the events in Yerevan on March 1, 2008, in the part of the death of Police Major Hamlet Tadevosyan. Inspectors assert that the group has distorted the results of their work. It was stated by the head of the Service Vaagn Arutyunyan.

On May 11, the Tbilisi suburb of Vasiani, where the base of Ministry of Defence of Georgia is located, hosted a solemn opening of the NATO exercises named "Cooperative Lancer/Cooperative Longbow-2009", held under the NATO Programme "Partnership for Peace".

Isa Yamadaev has expressed his confidence that President of Chechnya Ramzan Kadyrov stood behind the attempt on his brother, ex-commander of the "Vostok" battalion Sulim Yamadaev, and the murder of his other brother, ex-deputy of the State Duma of the Russian Federation Ruslan Yamadaev. Now Isa is afraid for his life too.

President of Georgia Mikhail Saakashvili asserts that the starting day of negotiations with the opposition is the victory day of Georgian democracy. In his opinion, today a step to civilized relations was made.

Today in the village of Arshty, Sunzha District of Ingushetia, a local resident Sultanov, Suleiman Suleimanovich, born in 1976, was assassinated. Unknown persons in masks rushed into Sultanov's house and shot him dead point-blank.

Former Imam of Jama'at of Kabardino-Balkaria Musa Mukozhev was identified among the three persons killed at night on May 11 in Dugulubgey village as a result of a special operation of the FSB.

In Georgia, on the case about mutiny at the military base in Mukhrovani, David Sulkhanishvili and Kakha Kobaidze, Commanders of the 1st and 3rd Infantry Brigades, were detained. The are suspected of concealing information about the would-be mutiny of the armoured battalion in Mukhrovani.

Basing on witnesses' evidences about application of beatings and torture to them by law enforcers with the aim to knockout the "necessary" evidences, the General Public Prosecutor of Armenia Agvan Ovsepyan has signed a decision to open a criminal case on "compulsion to evidence".

On May 10, the recently built mosque in the "Oil Stones" region - a settlement on piles in the Caspian Sea, built in late 1940s for development of the oil deposit having the same name, was closed.

Nagorno-Karabakh should be an equal party in the negotiating process on settlement of the Karabakh conflict, as stated by Bako Saakyan, President of Nagorno-Karabakh.

In the evening on May 10, in Baksan District of Kabardino-Balkaria, law enforcers killed three persons who, according to power agencies, were participants of illegal armed formations.

In Tbilisi, about 10,000 persons demand resignation of President Mikhail Saakashvili in the square in front of the building of the Parliament of Georgia.

The students from the city of Vladimir, who disappeared in the mountains of Abkhazia, have been found sound and healthy in a difficult to access place in Bzyb Gorge of Gagra District.