News

On June 27, the criminal case on three militiamen accused of extorting money from illegally detained minors was delivered to the court of the Prigorodny District of North Ossetia.

On June 30, the Institute for Reporters' Freedom and Safety (IRFS) has repeatedly addressed President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliev with a request to fix up a monument in Baku, in the Metbuat Avenue, to the editor-in-chief of the "Monitor" magazine Elmar Guseinov who was assassinated on March 2, 2005.

In Tskhinval, at night of June 30, Georgian special services kidnapped Valery Tadtaev, 32, a citizen of the Russian Federation, a native of North Ossetia, runs a statement of the State Committee for Information and Press of South Ossetia.

President of Abkhazia Sergey Bagapsh has treated the today's explosions near the Sukhumi marketplace to be an act of terrorism and accused Georgian special services for committing it. Sergey Bagapsh has also ordered starting from July 1 to ban any traffic in Georgian-Abkhazian border that runs along River Ingur.

Four citizens out of six who received fragmental wounds as a result of today's explosions in the area of Sukhumi marketplace in Abkhazia were hospitalized to the Sukhumi clinical hospital, and now their lives are under no threat.

Today, relatives of the missing residents of Dagestan Ali Zalitdinov and Idris Guchakaev, who have again rallied near the building of the Republic's Prosecutor's Office, were told both guys were detained by militiamen and are now kept in the SIZO (pre-trial detention facility).

At night on June 28, in the vicinity of a 9-storey apartment house in the Akushinskiy Avenue in Makhachkala, the capital of Dagestan, the regime of counterterrorist operation was introduced. According to law enforcement bodies, militants were blocked in one of the apartments.

At the regular round of American-Azerbaijani democracy dialogue that was held on June 27 in Baku, David Kramer, assistant of the US State Secretary on democracy and human rights, called the Azerbaijani authorities to ensure democratic character of the forthcoming presidential election.

The government of Chechnya has launched a PR-campaign against Sulim Yamadaev, commander of the "Vostok" (East) battalion with the aim to conceal their own crimes. This was stated to the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent by Ruslan Yamadaev, Sulim Yamadaev's relative.

Eka Beseliya, Secretary General of the Party "For United Georgia" and advocate of Irakliy Okruashvili, Party leader, is going to address the French Embassy for providing political asylum to her son Rati Milorava who is 15.

According to Gyulnara Rustamova, an activist of the public movement "Mothers of Dagestan for Human Rights", new protest actions organized by relatives of missing or murdered persons cannot be excluded.

The well-known Azerbaijani journalist Makhal Ismailoglu, who was detained on June 27 and then released after many hours of interrogation by the police of the Apsheronsk District of Baku, is convinced that the authorities want to arrest him on false charges for his critical publications.

According to Abkhazian President Sergey Bagapsh, whatever the balance of political forces in the international arena may be, Abkhazia will never be a part of Georgia again.

On June 27, at their joint session, deputies of both chambers of Chechen parliament have voted for their self-dissolution. The work of the first convocation of the parliament will continue till the election of new deputies to take place, possibly, this October.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has disseminated a statement related to the stop of information broadcasting by the "Mze" Independent TV Channel.

Residents of six villages of Dagestan, whose land estates are gradually flooded as the reservoir of the Irganay Hydroelectric Power Plant (IHPP) is formed, demand compensation for their loss of land and houses. Additionally, the population complains of being intimidated by the authorities, who try to hide the problem from the public.

Afshin Irfan Khosroshakhi, a human rights activist who was engaged in defending the rights of Azerbaijanis living in Iran, was found murdered in his own office.

In Makhachkala, near the building of the Prosecutor's Office of Dagestan, relatives of two young men, who had been kidnapped, as they assert, by employees of law enforcement bodies, have organized a spontaneous rally and blocked the traffic in the Yaragskiy Avenue.

The democratic forces of Azerbaijan believe that the country has no conditions for free elections. This was stated today during the Civil Forum held in the Baku-based Hotel "Europe" under the motto "On Situation with Democratic Freedoms and Human Rights in Azerbaijan before Presidential Election".

Today, in the capital of Azerbaijan, the police have detained the well-known journalist Makhal Ismailoglu. According to certain data, his article in the newspaper was the cause of his arrest.