News

The Public Committee in defence of political prisoner Mikhail Trepashkin has expressed indignation at slander information in relation to Lyubov Kosik, defender of the ex-FSB officer, disseminated by Trepashkin's public defender Sergey Kuznetsov.

The authorities of Grozny, the capital of Chechnya, have failed to sanction a meeting that was to be held by the relatives of the persons kidnapped in Chechnya and Dagestan.

The government of Dagestan has allotted 13 million roubles to compensate the damage caused by three counterterrorist special operations.

Today, the Lazarevskoe District Court has released from custody three out of seven OMON officers accused of beating tourists in summer of 2006 in the city of Sochi (Krasnodar Territory).

Mekhman Muradov, a life prisoner of the Gobustan closed prison of Azerbaijan, has sewn up his mouth and went on a hunger strike.

Ali Insanov, former Minister of Public Health complains of his custody conditions. The ex-Minister who is kept in the penitentiary establishment No. 13 was placed into a barrack for 150 inmates.

In the opinion of Armen Aivazyan, Director of the "Ararat" Centre of Scientific-Strategic Studies, Resolution 106, approved one of these days by the US Congress, is considering many acute issues for Armenians, and this is its main distinction for the better from a number of similar documents adopted in some other countries.

The Abkhazian Eparchy has refuted the statement of President of Georgia Saakashvili about liquidated Georgian Orthodox churches and monasteries in Abkhazia, and declared that there are no Georgian churches and monasteries as such in Abkhazia.

Allegations of certain Georgian NGOs about shutting down the Georgian church in Gakha village and exile of the churchman from there have nothing to do with reality, the State Committee for Work with Religious Structures informed.

In the middle of this week, the State Duma of the Russian Federation will approve the law on creating the State Olympic Corporation. On October 16, the deputies will consider another Olympic bill.

Vladimir Putin does not exclude a possibility of amending the Russian legislation that regulates the activities of NGOs.

According to Ucha Nanuashvili, leader of the Georgia-based Centre for Defence of Human Rights, the authorities of Azerbaijan want to shut down a Georgian church in the north of the country.

President of Russia Vladimir Putin believes that the investigation of the murder case of journalist Anna Politkovskaya is on the proper track and close to its end.

According to a source from the Investigatory Committee at the Prosecutor's Office of Adygea, "the video record reveals appeals to the actions, directed at kindling hatred and racial enmity."

On October 14 at about 2:30 p.m. it became known that a Russian family was assassinated by unknown culprits in the city of Karabulak (Ingushetia).

Today, US State Secretary Condoleezza Rice has held a meeting in Moscow with representatives of civil organizations and mass media, where they discussed the situation with human rights in Russia, the level of corruption, problems in the area of freedom of speech and the situation in North Caucasus.

Victims of the terrorist act in Beslan prepare to refer all documents on the case to the Strasbourg Court on Human Rights and hope that the Court, being the supreme European instance of justice, will support their stand.

Issa Gazdiyev, Ingushetia Supreme Court judge, has acquitted Malgobeck district internal affairs unit officers who were accused of negligence, causing the tragedy in Beslan in September 2004.

Lenin district court of North Ossetia has adjourned its decision on whether or not to initiate a criminal case against lawyer Irina Kodzaeva accused by the General Prosecutor's Office investigator of violence, until October 15.

Most part of applications of Volgograd oblast residents, addressed to the regional Ombudsman, are linked with a single topic. Around 40% of such applications are connected with the problem of dwelling for children.