News

The Corriere della Sera newspaper has retold the manifesto of the Moscow Human Rights Society "Memorial," with which the Society presents itself to the Oslo Jury - the "Memorial" has been nominated for this year's Nobel Peace Prize.

The investigators deny the nationalist character of the massacres of "Caucasians" in Moscow, allegedly accomplished by two students from the Russian capital.

The North-Caucasian Regional Military Court has made a decision to go on with proceedings despite the absence of three out of the four defendants - Eduard Ulman, Vladimir Voevodin and Alexander Kalaganskiy (only defendant Alexei Perelevskiy is present in the courtroom).

On June 6, the Sverdlovsk Regional Court will consider the cassation appeal against the decision of the Tagilstroj District Court of the city of Nizhni Tagil of March 9, 2007, according to which the custody regime for Mikhail Trepashkin, a political prisoner serving his term at the Correction Colony (IK-13), was toughened (transfer from settlement-colony into general regime colony).

The Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation (RF) has made a decision to consider, with participation of representatives of the parties, the appeal of the parents of the militants who died on October 13, 2005, in Nalchik.

Anna Politkovskaya's colleagues from the "Novaya Gazeta" have progressed a lot in their investigation and found it necessary to tell the story. "We have identified the customers of the murder," Vyacheslav Izmailov, a former officer of the Russian Army, now a journalist of the newspaper engaged in the investigation, says.

A scandalous case about crimes committed on motives of national hatred is investigated by the Public Prosecutor's Office of the South-West District of Moscow: a young skinhead has confessed of murdering 37 persons, including Caucasian natives.

The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has received and delivered to the State Office of Public Prosecutor the documents on extradition of Russian businessman Andrei Lugovoj accused by the British authorities of murdering FSB ex-officer Alexander Litvinenko.

One of the five mosques closed by the authorities in August 2004 has reopened in Nalchik, the capital of Kabardino-Balkaria, in the "Aleksandrovka" dwelling district.

In Azerbaijan, the satirical web site Tinsoмbeti.com was hacked and blocked. People at the Institute for Reporters' Freedom and Security are sure that the hacker's attack was undertaken under the command of Azerbaijani authorities who are resolutely and regularly criticising the web site.

Today, the NGOs of the Republic of South Ossetia have disseminated their Appeal to International Community. The Appeal was sent to the United Nations, Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), OSCE, NATO, and European NGOs and public organizations.

At the NGO Resource Centre (RC) of Stepanakert, a meeting took place of the leaders of NGOs of Nagorny Karabakh with Batal Kobakhiya and Liana Kvarcheliya, representatives of the Centre for Humanitarian Programmes of Abkhazia.

In the city of Stavropol, in the evening of May 24, a mass fight burst out near one of the casinos, in which, by different sources, from 100 to 300 young people took part. As a result of the fight, Gilani Ataev, a 2-year law student of the Modern Humanities Academy, was killed.

Azerbaijan is negotiating with Turkey on construction of a branch line from the basic Baku-Tbilisi-Kars (BTK) railway. The branch will run to the Turkish city of Igdyr and further to the Nakhichevan Autonomous Republic (NAR).

Sardar Alibeili, editor-in-chief of the Azerbaijani Nota Bene newspaper, has applied for political asylum in Russia and lodged a respective petition to the Embassy of the Russian Federation in Azerbaijan.

In the course of the meetings in Yerevan and Baku, the co-chairmen of the Minsk OSCE Group Bernard Fussier and Yuri Merzlyakov have discussed the basic principles of Karabakh settlement with the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan.

The press service of the authorities of South Ossetia has disseminated a statement that "because of the sharply aggravated situation in the conflict zone, a consultative meeting should have taken place in Tskhinval today of co-chairmen of the South Ossetian and Georgian parts of the Mixed Control Commission (MCC) Boris Chochiev and Merab Antadze."

Tonight, the Ossetian party has opened fire in the direction of Georgian villages located in the Grand Liakhva Gorge.

The protest actions against by arrest of Nadir Mekhdi Garabagi took place in Dzhulfa, Iran, and in Tabriz, the largest city of South Azerbaijan.

Litigation on the case of Farkhad Aliev, former Minister for Economic Development of Azerbaijan, is conducted with serious violations and in fact in closed regime.