News

The Нuman Rights Watch Organization is insistently calling Ilkham Aliev, president of Azerbaijan, to take steps to stop the policy of impunity for the violence applied to journalists, and to ensure the observance of the country's international legal obligations in the sphere of freedom of expression and freedom of press, runs the message of Holly Cartner.

Anthony Brenton, British Ambassador to Russia, has stated that in his opinion the investigation of the poisoning case of ex-FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko will be completed in the coming few weeks.

As of today, more than 60,000 refugees have returned to Abkhazia. President Sergey Bagapsh has announced the fact on air of the Abkhazian TV in answer to the question on when the return of refugees would start to the whole territory of the Republic.

In the evening on February 23, at the meeting of the president of Georgia with representatives of Georgian mass media in Tbilisi's Sacrebulo (self-ruling body), M. Saakashvili stated that "certain citizens of the country who stand against Georgia's accession to NATO lack wisdom."

In the opinion of Sergey Bagapsh, president of Abkhazia, the political means of settling the problem of the Kodor Gorge have not yet been exhausted.

February 23 is marked in Chechnya as the day of memory and national mourning. In February 1944, under the Kremlin's order, more than half a million Chechens and Ingushes were deported from the places of their permanent residence.

The South Ossetia has accused Georgia of another disruption of the meeting of co-chairmen of the Mixed Control Commission (MCC) for Georgian-Ossetian settlement, which should have taken place in Istanbul from February 28 to March 2.

Today in Moscow, at least 15 persons have been detained by "OMON" (special militia) during suppression of a non-sanctioned march of anarchists against the war in Chechnya and militarism, two minors among them.

A total of 181 candidates have been nominated to the 2007 Nobel Prize for Peace, including 46 organizations.

In the Krasnodar Territory, the Military Court of the Krasnodar Garrison has started a trial on the case on non-manual relations between soldiers that resulted in a suicide of a rank-and-file soldier.

Discontent grows among the workers of law enforcement bodies in Ingushetia. Militiamen demand to cover the indebtedness in extra pay-outs for the service in emergency conditions.

Ruslan Kishmaria, plenipotentiary representative of the president of Abkhazia in the Galskiy District, refutes the information, disseminated by a number of Georgian TV companies that the members of the "Group of Georgian Patriots" have burnt down twelve houses in the District.

Acting president of Chechnya Ramzan Kadyrov has announced his address on the occasion of the anniversary of deportation of Chechens.

The trial of publicist Rafik Tagi, author of the scandalous article "Europe and We" with its hard-hitting utterances about Prophet Mohammed, and Samir Sadagatoglu, editor of the newspaper "Sanat" (Culture), where the article was published, will start on March 1 at the Nasiminskiy Court of the capital of Azerbaijan.

The medical stuff of the CIS Collective Forces for Peacemaking (CIS CFPM) in the zone of Georgian-Abkhazian conflict have saved the life of a police employee from Georgia in the upper section of the Kodor Gorge.

On February 20, the Oktiabrskiy District Court of the city of Novorossiysk, Krasnodar Territory, held a court session chaired by Judge Esipko, S. N., on the appellate petition of Vadim Karastelyov, expert of the "Novorossiysk Committee for Human Rights," to the magistrate judge's ruling.

On March 1, 2007, they plan to hold an international conference in Grozny "Respect of Human Rights in the Chechen Republic: First Outcomes of Ombudsman's Work and Prospects for the Future."

Three candidates have been nominated to the post of Chechnya's president: Ramzan Kadyrov, temporary acting president of the Republic; Muslim Khuchiev, first deputy head of the office of the president and government of the Republic; and Shakhid Dzhamaldaev, head of the administration of the Groznenskiy District.

Colonel Yuri Budanov, former commander of Armored Regiment No. 160, convicted for the murder of Elza Kungaeva, a Chechen girl, "continues serving his punishment at Strict Custody Corrective Colony No. 3 in the town of Dimitrovgrad, the Ulyanovsk Region."

In Vladikavkaz, capital of North Ossetia, the employees of law enforcement bodies are searching the Office of the British Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR).