News

The US Helsinki Commission held a briefing on June 19 in the US Congress with participation of Russian experts on Northern Caucasus dedicated to aggravation of situation in Ingushetia.

It is planned that in the 2nd decade of July, President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliev will visit Turkey. In the course of the visit, Mr Aliev, together with Presidents of Turkey and Georgia Abdullah Gьl and Mikhail Saakashvili, will take in the launching ceremony of the Turkish section of the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway.

In Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, about five thousand supporters of the opposition are holding a non-sanctioned rally. Leader of the opposition Levon Ter-Petrosyan and his supporters are among the participants.

A statement promulgated by the press service of the Council of Chechen Refugees in Azerbaijan runs that the refugees who now live in Azerbaijan want to leave this country since they think that their life and freedom are under threat.

A group of European parliamentarians has offered to nominate the International Society "Memorial", which deals, among other things, with investigations of human rights violations in Northern Caucasus, to the Nobel Peace Award.

Daniel Fried, assistant of the US Secretary of State for Europe and Eurasia, told on June 18 at the hearing held in the Committee for Foreign Matters of the US Congress that unblocking of the Turkish-Armenian border should not be interlinked with settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

Human rights activists have detected another mass burial from the time of the 1995 Chechen war. This is already the third burial found in Chechnya during the last month.

Kristina Ozgan, Minister of Economy of Abkhazia, has noted, while speaking to the participants of the International Economic Forum "Abkhazia-2008. Investments and Prospects", the needs to have investments made into agriculture, industry, wholesale trade, power engineering, construction and transports.

Special OSCE representative in fighting trafficking in humans Eva Biaudet has invited the authorities of Azerbaijan to cooperate with NGOs in combating trafficking in humans.

On June 18, a group of inmates of the general custody No. 10 made a fight with the sentries. There are injured persons among the colony officers and the inmates, several persons were hospitalized with grave traumas.

The human rights organization named "The International Federation of Journalists", based in Brussels, is satisfied with the charges presented to the three journalists suspected of murdering journalist Anna Politkovskaya and demands that they should be properly punished.

Authors of the "Ingushetia.Ru" website have lodged a cassation complaint against the ruling of the Kuntsevo District Court of Moscow that prescribes to stop the operation of the Internet resource.

After two explosions on June 18 in Sukhumi suburb, the guard of Russian railway troop servicemen, who are repairing the railway in Abkhazia, was intensified.

On June 18, during their visit to Kabardino-Balkaria, plenipotentiaries of the Netherlands and Belgium Yan-Paul Dirkse and Bertrand de Krommeburg had a meeting with Mariam Akhmatova, mother of a suspect in the criminal case related to the attack on Nalchik in October 2005.

On June 17, power agents detained four employees of the Human Rights Centre (HRC) "Memorial" in the Urus-Martan District of Chechnya and threatened to execute them.

The official answer of the State Office of Public Prosecutor of Armenia to the request of the Chairman of the Helsinki Association of Armenia Mikael Danielyan of May 11 runs that none of the March 1 casualties has been qualified as a victim.

Today, the Executive Committee of the Avar National Council has addressed an open letter to President of Dagestan Mukhu Aliev. The appeal makes emphasis on the situation with the Avars who live in Azerbaijan.

The Presidium of the Supreme Court of Russia has rejected the cassation presentation lodged by the General Prosecutor's Office on the murder case of the editor-in-chief of the Russian version of the Forbes Magazine Paul Khlebnikov. The case will go back to the prosecutor's office.

The Investigatory Committee at the Russian Prosecutor's Office has informed today about the completion of the investigation in relation to the persons accused of murdering the observer of the "Novaya Gazeta" Anna Politkovskaya.

Sources in South Ossetia assert that Georgia is hurriedly erecting fortifications in the Georgian-Ossetian conflict zone. The South-Ossetian part of the MCC (Mixed Control Commission) appeals to the peacekeepers and the OSCE to register these violations.