News

A group of servicemen of Russia's Defense Ministry was blown up on an explosive device in the Itum-Kali district of Chechnya, with one man injured, RIA Novosti was told on Wednesday, April 14, in the headquarters of the joint group of forces in the North Caucasus.

12 people have been abducted in Kabardino-Balkaria and taken away in the direction of Mozdok, North Osetia, for the last few days.

The police did not allow several dozens of people to hold an unauthorized sitting demonstration on Freedom Square in the heart of Yerevan.

An armed group of up to 20 rebels opened fire on police cars killing three people. Then the same group captured four policemen and shot them dead.

Air strikes killed six people - a woman and five children - in Chechnya on April 9, the Human Rights Center Memorial reported on April 13.

"For too long, the world has been indulging Russia in its claims that the situation has been "normalized"," said Rachel Denber, acting executive director of Human Rights Watch's Europe and Central Asia Division. "It's time for the world to send an unequivocal message that Russia must take real measures to stop the abuses in Chechnya."

A young man, presumably a Caucasian, poured inflammable mixture on himself and set himself on fire in Krasnodar on April 12. The incident took place in front of the building of the regional administration.

Secretary of the Georgian National Security Council Ivan Merabishvili said after the talks with the Adjarian leader that "there is no alternative to the disarmament, and the central authorities will take measures provided for in the law for such cases."

"What explanation can be provided for it except the aspiration to remove from Russia all those who, occupied with humanitarian activity, cannot but see the violations of international standards that accompany the return of IDPs to Chechnya?" reads the statement by Svetlana Gannushkina, a member of the Presidential Human Rights Commission.

Meeting participants put up desperate resistance, but it was crushed, mainly due to the water jets. Then policemen started to beat people, including women and aged people, and to displace them from the avenue.

A source at the republican administration reported it.

The criminals drove him to the region of the Chechen-Aul village, which is several tens of kilometers far from Grozny, and threw him out of the car without stopping.

On 12 April, agents for the Moscow's public prosecutor seized a computer, books, newspapers and other documents during a search of the apartment of the editor of the Radikalnaya Gazeta newspaper. The public prosecutor is investigating Stomakhin for "incitement of national, racial or religious hatred."

Criminal proceedings have been instituted by the article on hooliganism of the Armenian Criminal Code in connection with the violent actions against media representatives during the opposition meeting in Yerevan on April 5.

Meanwhile, the rebel website Kavkaz Center confirms the information about the attack.

Unidentified soldiers of federal forces, moving in several armored personnel carriers and UAZ cars without number plates, detained and took away in an unknown direction 8 civilians (men between the ages of 30 and 40) in the village of Duba-Yurt on March 27. It was established in the course of a check that the above-mentioned people were held at the military base in Khankala.

Earlier they were considered to be missing. As the Novaya Gazeta newspaper reports, this fact has become known due to a video record made by an officer of the Ministry of Justice.

"If Aslan Abashidze cannot disarm these people, I am ready to open stations and buy arms from the population," Mikhail Saakashvili said to journalists.

The letter signed by Basayev reads: "We warn everybody not to come near to Zyazikov, to beware of his presence since we will use any chance to attack him, no matter who will be near."

212 people left the Satsita tent camp, which is in Ingushetia's Sunzha district, for places of their permanent residence on the territory of Chechnya from 5 to 11 April 2004.