News

"Georgia has its position of principle in relation to Russia's joining the WTO, and it assumes legitimization of frontier-customs points and closure of illegal check points in the separatists' sections of Georgian-Russian border," Giorgi Arveladze, Minister of Economy of Georgia, has stated at a briefing upon termination of the sitting of Georgian government.

Dagestan Prosecutor Igor Tkachov has announced today disclosure of the murder of Bitar Bitarov, prosecutor of the town of Buinaksk, committed on the 8th of last August, and attempts on Adilgirej Magomedtagirov (on August 8, 2006, and February 4, 2007).

The authorities of Chechnya are preparing an application to the president of Russia with a request to help to find three thousand missing residents of the Republic.

A moral and material damage compensation claim worth more than 4.6 million roubles was lodged today by the persons who were injured at the Grozny-Moscow train explosion in summer of 2005, Valery Prilepskiy, advocate of one of the defendants, has reported.

The Court has rejected the petition of the defence of Eduard Ulman, who is accused of executing local residents in 2002 in the vicinity of the Chechen village of Dai whom he found in a car, to subject the defendants to an additional forensic psychological examination.

A couple of days are left till Ramzan Kadyrov's inauguration. Today, foreign newspapers write that this day will become the mourning day for all human rights activists in the world. In their opinion, a man involved in many crimes is becoming the official leader of Chechnya.

On April 1 in the morning, a bomb exploded in a shuttle van ("marshrutka") on the route from Udzhar to Baku, capital of Azerbaijan. As a consequence, Ragim Askerov, 37, a resident of Hachmaz, who was carrying the bomb, was killed, and several passengers were wounded.

On March 11, when bombarding the upper section of Kodor Gorge, military helicopters used Russian-made controlled shells model "Ataka" (Attack), Vano Merabishvili, Minister of Internal Affairs of Georgia, told in his interview to the "Rustavi-2" TV Company.

Ulman's advocate Roman Krzhechkovskiy insists on an additional psychological examination of the defendants. He has lodged a respective petition today to the North-Caucasian Regional Military Court in Rostov-on-Don.

The leadership of Chechnya has categorically disapproved the initiative of the European Parliament to send a commission to the Chechen Republic for studying the situation in the region. This was declared by Dukvakha Abdurakhmanov.

On March 30, at 7 p.m., in the city of Elista (Kalmykia), at office of the Kalmyk Republic's Branch of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF), unknown persons attacked Vitaly Shulenin, editor of the "Leninskiy Puts" (Lenin's Way) opposition newspaper of the Kalmyk Republic's Branch (KRB) of the CPRF.

This week, the plenipotentiary envoy of the Russian president to the South Federal District (SFD) has discussed with Moslems of Krasnodar Territory the issue of building a mosque for the parishioners from Sochi and Krasnodar, where the authorities have been unable to allocate land for the mosque cannot for more than ten years.

In Azerbaijan, a group of inmates of the Gobustan closed prison continue their hunger strike commenced on Monday, March 26.

Today Azerbaijan marks the Memory Day of the victims of genocide against Azerbaijanis who perished during the events of March-April of 1918.

Poultry mortality cases registered in a number of districts of Krasnodar Territory have nothing to do with the bird's flu infection.

The Pyatigorsk City Court has re-qualified the offences committed by Anton (Abdullah) Stepanenko, former imam of Pyatigorsk mosque, and Andrei Grudin, another convict in the case, from Article 163 of the Criminal Code (CC) of the Russian Federation (extortion) to Article 330 (arbitrariness).

At night of March 12, several villages of Kodor Gorge were bombarded by Russian helicopters, Paul Felgengauer, an independent military observer, asserts. The expert thinks that Abkhazia and Georgia have actually no aircrafts capable to fly in darkness.

Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who had covered events in Chechnya and was killed in Moscow last October, has been posthumously awarded with UNESCO Prize for freedom of press.

In London, a meeting took place of entrepreneur Boris Berezovskiy with representatives of law enforcement bodies of Russia and Great Britain, where Mr. Berezovskiy gave evidence to Russian investigators on the murder case of Alexander Litvinenko, former Russian FSB (Federal Security Bureau) officer.

Yesterday, the international organization Human Rights Watch published a report entitled "Guantanamo Stigma," dealing with the fate of former Guantanamo prisoners, among them - Rasul Kudaev, a resident of Kabardino-Balkaria.