News

Azerbaijani human rights activists and oppositional politicians have welcomed the decision of the PACE Committee on Legal Matters and Human Rights to restore the post of Special Rapporteur on political prisoners in Azerbaijan and appoint German MP Christoph Stresser thereto.

Eleven out of twelve defendants in the criminal case on militants' attack on Ingushetia in June 2004, whose relatives held pickets demanding not to protract the litigation on their joint case, were removed from the IVS (pre-trial detention facility) of the MIA of Ingushetia to the IVS called "White Swan" in Pyatigorsk.

In the evening on March 24, in the Vedeno District of Chechnya, a group of armed persons kidnapped a militiaman. Today in the morning, his body was found.

Residents the Imereti Valley, whose houses are within the construction zone of Sochi Olympiad objects, have drafted an appeal to President of Russia Dmitri Medvedev with a complaint against unsatisfactory terms of resettlement. This was stated today at the press conference convoked by ecologists and public activists.

Today, the Tbilisi City Court has sentenced two activists of the oppositional "People's Movement to Save Georgia" and two members of the Party "Democratic Movement - United Georgia", arrested on March 23, to two months of pre-trial custody.

The Russian government has instructed the Ministry of Finance (MoF) to increase its budgetary allocations for 2009 aimed to pay all the debts and daily allowances to the personnel of the RF's Armed Forces, deployed in the territory of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

To Russia Military Prosecutor's Office has received over a hundred complaints on violations of the rights of the recruits who took part in the August conflict in South Ossetia.

The Institute for Reporters' Freedom and Safety (IRFS) of Azerbaijan has summed up the "Novruz Marathon" action - a charitable fundraising session in favour of the families of six convicted journalists. The action started on February 25 and ended on March 20 - by the Novruz spring holiday.

Natella Akaba, Secretary of the Public Chamber of Abkhazia and Chair of the Association "Women of Abkhazia" has treated the Belarus' position on recognition of Abkhazia's independence as "frank bargaining." She made this statement in the TV Programme "Akhtuskua" (Events) on the Abkhazian State TV Channel.

The "Union for Democracy" (UD) that unites the oppositional parties of Azerbaijan has stated that the referendum on March 18 on amendments to the Constitution of Azerbaijan was illegitimate.

Today in the morning, an engineering-sapper group of the Internal Troops of Russia's MIA was shelled by unidentified persons from a passenger car. Fortunately, nobody was killed or wounded.

The International EU Commission (IEUC) set up for investigating the five-day war in South Ossetia in August 2008 has found evidences that the warfare was initiated by President of Georgia Mikhail Saakashvili. However, the Commission has no incontestable proofs of Saakashvili's guilt, since the Georgian party had made them a state secret, as the Der Spiegel German magazine writes.

Two out of eight defendants in the case about explosion in the Cherkizovo marketplace in Moscow, when 14 persons were lost, are at large after expiry of their two-year punishment. The grouping that committed the explosion had repeatedly attacked natives from the Caucasus.

Today, the city of Mineralnye Vody (Minvody), Stavropol Territory, has hosted mourning events to commemorate the victims of the terror act committed on March 24, 2001. On that day, three explosions in Stavropol Territory and Karachaevo-Circassia killed 26 persons and wounded over 150.

In Georgia, the two detainees - Malkhaz Gvelukashvili and Lasha Chkheneli - have been charged with illegal purchase and storage of firearms. Now the MIA of Georgia tries to prove that the arms had been purchased for the opposition.

Mark Tolchinskiy, head of the press service of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA) of the Republic of Dagestan, has refuted the information that bodies of mercenaries-Arabs were found among the militants liquidated in the special operation conducted on March 21.

At the meeting with relatives of participants of armed formations, held in the Vedeno District of Chechnya, Ruslan Alkhanov, Interior Minister, has stated that "he guarantees objective and impartial consideration of the problems of those militants who will come back."

The Mayoralty of Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia, has summed up the inspection of the available city's housing stock, which suffered from the warfare in August of 2008.

In Chechnya, people are differently assessing the meeting on March 20 in Moscow of Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

The "Caucasian Knot" correspondent in Ingushetia reports from the place of events that in Karabulak, opposite the store "Karabulak" in Oskanova Street, at about midday, unidentified persons in a "Lada-Prior" black car shelled a silver VAZ-21110 car. Local residents think that the attackers were power agents.