News

Former hostages and relatives of victims of the 2002 hostage crisis at the Dubrovka theater in Moscow will file a plea with the city prosecutor's office on Monday for opening a criminal case on the city government financial department's refusal to carry out a Tverskoy court ruling on the payment of compensation to them, announced their lawyer Igor Trunov.

According to the press secretary of the opposition bloc Justice, Ruzanna Hatchatrian, more than 10 members of opposition parties were arrested in the evening of April 4 and in the morning of April 5 in Yerevan and surrounding regions.

Achishvili, Muskhanov and the Chalayev brothers, members of illegal armed groups who are now in custody, committed several acts of terrorism against federal servicemen.

Participants passed the organization's charter again and adopted the program of its further activity.

On April 2, the Azerbaijan Court for Grave Crimes put imam of Baku's Juma Mosque Ilgar Allakhverdiev (Ibragimoglu) on probation for five years.

Main efforts of the agencies engaged in problems of the return of IDPs [internally displaced persons] to Chechnya have been aimed at the liquidation of the Satsita tent camp since 2 April.

Gelayev's relatives have made three unsuccessful attempts to take his body from the morgue of a hospital in Rostov.

The capacity of each of the explosive assemblies was about 40 kilograms of trotyl equivalent, the officer of the republican interior ministry said.

On April 2, former Defense Minister of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria Umar Khambiyev spoke on the Grozny television and called upon all the members of the Chechen armed resistance to lay down arms.

The creation of the new social and political organization Movement-88, initiated by the deputy of the Karabakh parliament Eduard Agabekian, was announced in Nagorny Karabakh in February 2004.

Early in the morning of April 1, Russian soldiers opened fired in the Leninsky district of Grozny on a passenger bus going from the Chechen capital to Argun.

According to information of the Internet media, 20 Ingush students who took part in the [March 29] protest rally against abductions of people by Russian special services and against the Russian helicopter attack on the village of Ordzhonikidzevskaya that left two people dead have been sent down by direct instructions from the head of Ingushetia, Murat Zyazikov.

"The idea of creating the movement appeared following the aggravation of the internal political situation in the county in late January. And the initiator of the creation of United Abkhazia was the Unity deputy group," deputy Daur Tarba said at the press conference.

Vice Prime Minister of the Chechen Government Ziyad Sabsabi met with George Kunz, a representative of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in the Northern Caucasus, in Grozny on April 1.

Ibragim Khashagulgov, 1988, died in the Sunzha district hospital, Ingushetia, on April 1. He was badly wounded on March 25, when a Russian military helicopter suddenly assaulted the village of Ordzhonikidzevskaya, Ingushetia's Sunzha district.

Speaking about the campaign for refugees' return to Chechnya from tent camps in Ingushetia, human rights activist Kim Wiesener noted that "the situation here hasn't changed ? the refugees are still being pressured to leave by the authorities."

On March 26-28, Yerevan-Baku satellite TV conferences were held. They were organized by the Yerevan and Baku Press Clubs under the "Possible Resolutions to the Karabah Conflict: Expert Evaluations and Media Coverage" joint project, supported by the Open Society Institute Network Media Program.

The All-Russian Conference "Ways for Overcoming Xenophobia, Racial Discrimination, and Anti-Semitism in the Multination Russian Federation" was held at the training center Moskovsky on March 28-30, with the assistance of the European Union within the framework of a 3-year project.

The North Caucasian Counter-terrorist Center (Center T) has been created pursuant to an order by Russian Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev.

On March 31, staff of the opposition newspaper Batumtsi were detained and conveyed to an addiction clinic for examination.