News

In relation to the people, whose houses are within the construction zone of Olympiad-2014 objects, the authorities of Sochi are holding the tactics "by hook or by crook". Valery Brinikh, co-chairman of the board of the international NGO named "Social-Ecological Union", told about it to the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent.

The Public Movement "For Karabakh and Republic" has announced a boycott of the referendum appointed on March 18 on amendments to the Constitution. The decision was made today at the meeting of the leaders of the parties and NGOs-members of the Public Movement.

A group of advocates involved in the case about the attack on power bodies of the Kabardino-Balkarian Republic (KBR) in October 2005 have sent a cassation complaint to the Supreme Court of Russia against the decision of the KBR's Supreme Court to cancel the jury. The lawyers ask to cancel the decision because it worsens the status of defendants, which is forbidden by the laws of the Russian Federation (RF).

At the session of the Georgian parliamentary committee for relations with compatriots abroad, the MPs offered to set up a working group for dealing with the problems the Georgian living in Azerbaijan.

Ombudsman Armen Arutyunyan told journalists about his intention to address the Ministry of Justice because health condition of Shant Arutyunyan, one of the defendants in the "Case of Seven", is very grave.

Former ambassador of Georgia Erosi Kitsmarishvili has accused Irakliy Kodua, a high-ranking official of Georgian MIA, and his relatives of beating him, which, as he said, was politically motivated.

Alla Ovanisyan, mother of Tigran Khachatryan, 23, who died as a result of application by the police of gas weapon "Cheryomukha-7" in the course of dispersal of the oppositional action on March 1, 2008, has stated that her son was killed by the authorities.

The oppositional parties of Georgia have gathered some 50,000 signatures of Tbilisi residents, who are ready to take part in the rally on April 9 in the centre of the capital with a resignation demand of President Mikhail Saakashvili. The signing-in campaign will continue, as Eka Beseliya, one of the leaders of the United Opposition of Georgia, said today at a briefing.

Today in Tbilisi, the police has dispersed the action, organized in Rustaveli Avenue by the members of youth organizations who have united into the oppositional movement "November 7".

Today in Yerevan, the process on "Case of Seven" about disorders in the capital of Armenian on March 1, 2008, will continue.

In Nazran, in the yard of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA) of Ingushetia, a picket was held by the relatives of the defendants, figuring in the case about attack on Ingushetia in 2004 and kept at the pre-trial prison (the so-called "IVS") of the MIA of Ingushetia; the picketers demanded that the date of consideration of the case be appointed.

Magomed Ocherkhadzhi, one of the leaders of Chechen community in Norway, who, according to Ruslan Khalidov, a native of Chechnya, should have been killed by the latter under the alleged order of Ramzan Kadyrov, said that Khalidov himself had been recruited by Norwegian special agencies.

Georgian media have promulgated, with reference to a source in the local Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA), the information that the authorities of South Ossetia had launched mass repressions against those Ossetians, who took part, on November 12, 2006, in alternative election of the President of South Ossetia held in the territory earlier controlled by Tbilisi. Tskhinvali refutes all statements of this sort.

Today in Moscow, a picket was held with a demand to set free Zara Murtazalieva, a native of Chechnya, convicted on accusation of preparing a terror act, and to release other women-political prisoners.

In the Kamensk District, Rostov Region, an attempt was made by members of one of private security agencies (PSA) to capture a large oil refinery in the city of Kamensk-Shakhtinskiy. Three persons were wounded.

Yunus-Bek Evkurov, President of the Republic of Ingushetia, said that his anticorruption actions have returned 14 million roubles back into the Republic's budget.

The participants of the roundtable, held at the Public Human Rights Centre of the Kabardino-Balkarian Republic believe that the restriction of juries is related to the particular criminal case, which considers the events on October 13, 2005, in Kabardino-Balkaria.

The Olympic construction sites in Sochi are in awful condition, as Yuri Trutnev, head of the Ministry for Natural Resources and Environment Protection ("Minprirody"), stated at the sitting of the Federal Technical Inspection Committee ("Rostekhnadzor") on Friday, March 6.

The Gamblers' Association of the Southern Federal District (SFD) of Russia asks to postpone the deadline for closing their gambling facilities located outside particular areas from July 1, 2009, till the end of 2012 under the motive that the so-called "Azov-City" is not ready yet.

The explosion in Ingushetia on March 5, which killed bomb technicians and sappers from the FSB and militia, could be a sort of preparation of a huge terror act, and its aim, most likely, was to liquidate the best bomb technicians and sappers of the Republic, as law enforcement bodies assert.