News

Dmitri Peskov, press secretary of Russian Premier, has stated that the Reporters Without Borders (RWB), who called Vladimir Putin in their annual report an enemy of the free press in Russia, had superficial knowledge of the topic. The press service of Ramzan Kadyrov, President of the Chechen Republic, stated that the estimate given by the RWB was biased when ranking Kadyrov among oppressors of the freedom of speech.

The Khamovniki Court of Moscow has sentenced Konstantin Pereverzev, who struck on March 31 at a Moscow metro station Liudmila Alekseeva, head of the oldest Russian human rights organization - Moscow Helsinki Group - to one conditional year.

As reported by the spokesman of the Department of the FSB (DFSB) for Ingushetia, the two women injured today in the course of a special operation in central Nazran (one of them later died in hospital), were helpers of Magomed Gardanov, leader of Ingush armed underground, liquidated in the skirmish.

The residents of Kara-Tyube village, Babayurt District of Dagestan, detained on April 15, were set free on April 18 only after active interference of human rights activists and media. All this time 16 persons were in the open air, since the ROVD (District Interior Division), where they were brought, has no enough room for keeping that number.

In Astrakhan, employees of a bank branch were stealing money for several months in a row from accounts of orphans and minors left without parental care.

President of Chechnya is officially accused of involvement in murder of his former security; attempt committed in Kabardino-Balkaria on former and present state officials; journalists are again in authorities' disgrace, - look up these and other events in the review of the week of April 26-May 2, 2010, in the Caucasian regions prepared by the "Caucasian Knot".

Prime Minister of Abkhazia Sergey Shamba and George Drndorski, representative of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and deputy coordinator of programmes for Eastern Europe, discussed at their meeting on May 3 the opportunity to continue the programme of the ICRC Mission in Abkhazia on searching those who disappeared in the 1992-1993 Georgian-Abkhazian war and identification of its casualties.

On May 3, Tsotne Gamsakhurdia, son of the ex-President of Georgia, who is in custody in Tbilisi, announced his termless hunger strike in prison hospital as a protest against the actions of the prison administration.

The Garadag District Court of Baku has hosted another court session on the criminal case of already convicted editor-in-chief of the newspaper "Real Azerbaijan" Einullah Fatullaev.

Currently, a former militiaman Ilya Galkin and a local resident Mikhail Denisenko, accused of triggering a series of explosions in the territory of Sochi in 2008-2009, get acquainted with the materials of the criminal case, which will then be sent to the public prosecutor for approval of the charge. Inspectors assert that the defendants' actions resulted in 7 casualties and about 20 victims.

The real aim of the terror act committed at the Nalchik hippodrome was President of Kabardino-Balkaria Arsen Kanokov. This is the opinion of Adalbi Shkhagoshev, a Deputy of the State Duma and Honourable Citizen of the city of Nalchik.

One of the main reasons of the problem of political prisoners in Azerbaijan is the absence of independent judicial power. This was stated at a press conference on Monday, May 3, by Leila Yunus, Director of the Institute of Peace and Democracy (IPD).

In the Astrakhan Region, Elena Levkina, Director of the Tuzuklei secondary school, where a mass poisoning of children took place, was dismissed from her post under suspicion of negligence.

Today at night, in the municipal district of Barsuki in Nazran, Ingushetia, unidentified persons shelled a private house from a grenade launcher. On preliminary data, the attack was caused by the fact that the house owner was engaged in selling alcohol.

An STSI (State Traffic Safety Inspectorate, known in Russia as "GIBDD") inspector, who was installing a video camera at the entrance to the city of Baksan (Kabardino-Balkaria), was wounded by unidentified persons from a passing car.

Nino Kalandadze, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, views the visit of Thomas Hammarberg, Supreme Commissioner of the Council of Europe, to Georgia as a victory of Georgian diplomacy. There is information that three more citizens of Georgia can be set free in the near future.

In Armenia, it's not yet the time for the freedom of speech, Boris Navasardyan, President of the Yerevan Press Club, said today at the press conference dated to the World Press Freedom Day.

Today in the morning, residents of several villages of the Ochamchira District, located in Eastern Abkhazia, blocked the railway and stopped 13 cars that moved to take up to 700 tons of coal from Ochamchira.

The World Press Freedom Day - May 3 - was traditionally marked by representatives of Azerbaijani democratic public by paying visits to tombs of perished journalists Elmar Guseinov and Nadzhaf Nadzafov.

On the occasion of the World Press Freedom Day marked today, the Reporters Without Borders (RWB) have published a new list of those whom human rights defenders regard to be "press persecutors". Along the Chairman of the Peoples Republic of China Hu Jintao and President of Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the list now contains Prime Minister of Russia Vladimir Putin and President of Chechnya Ramzan Kadyrov.