News

The court has ruled to extend for two more months the custody term of Akop Akopyan, Deputy of Armenian Parliament, who had supported the leader of the opposition Levon Ter-Petrosyan and was deprived of his deputy's immunity after the March 1 events. A protest action in support of Akopyan was held in Yerevan.

The parliament of Kabardino-Balkaria has received an answer to their request to the Moscow Municipal Duma on the facts of attacks and murders in Moscow of natives of Kabardino-Balkaria committed in January-March of this year.

Employees of law enforcement bodies have detained a group of local residents suspected of kidnapping a lady-resident of Moscow in the Grozny District of Chechnya. A source in the interior bodies has informed the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent about it.

A local resident, 37, who for some time had been a fighter of the regiment of field commander Salman Raduev, has surrendered to employees of law enforcement bodies in the Oktiabrskiy District of the capital of Chechnya.

Thomas Hammerberg, Higher Commissioner of the Council of Europe for Human Rights, plans to visit Azerbaijan after the presidential election. Mr Hammerberg told about it in his conversation with a group of Azerbaijani journalists in Strasbourg.

On June 27, at a press conference in Grozny, the capital of Chechnya, the Human Rights Centre (HRC) "Memorial" will present the fourth part of the violence chronicle in Chechnya entitled "People Live Here", dedicated to the period from July to September 2001.

The PACE's Monitoring Commission has supported with its 24 votes the document on the progress in fulfilling the requirements of PACE's Resolution No. 1609. According to the new document, Armenia will have time till January 2009 to cope with all the requirements.

Today, 10 Kurmanch nationals have held a picket in Krasnodar against tortures applied to Rashid Gurzhiev, Anatoly Dursunov and Ruslan Kelosmanov. The picketers grouped in the mini-park opposite the administration of the Krasnodar Territory and demanded that law-enforcement and judicial bodies treat the detainees objectively.

On June 24, it became known that on June 19, 2008, the board of jurymen of the Supreme Court of the Republic of Dagestan acquitted Ilyas Abutalibovich Dibirov, born in 1983, on all indictment points and released him right in the courtroom.

Journalists of Krasnodar have sent an appeal to Alexei Simonov, President of the Foundation in Defence of Glasnost, with a request to inquire the Dean of Journalism Department of the Kuban State University and Chair of the Union of Journalists of Kuban, why they do nothing to release Sergey Rozhkov from custody.

On June 24, employees of the Federal Service for Punishment Enforcement (FSPE) stormed and seized six apartments in the hostel located in the Yasny Proezd in Moscow, where families of refugees from Azerbaijan and Abkhazia lived.

Terry Davis, Secretary General of the Council of Europe (CE), finds it especially important to investigate into the murders committed on March 1 in Yerevan. Mr Davis made this statement today at a press conference in Strasbourg, while answering the question about his estimates of fulfilment by the authorities of Armenia of PACE's Resolution No. 1609.

Terry Davis, Secretary General of the Council of Europe, made his comments on the Resolution "On Operation of Democratic Institutes in Azerbaijan", adopted on June 24 in Strasbourg at the PACE session, and expressed his confidence that the Azerbaijani government will seriously treat the recommendations of the Council of Europe and take the required measures.

Today, Emin Guseinov, head of the Institute for Reporters' Freedom and Safety (IRFS), was discharged from the emergency hospital, where he had been taken in the state of unconsciousness as a result of the physical violence exerted on him at the 22nd police station of the Nasiminskiy District Interior Department of Baku.

The report entitled "As though they fell from the sky: counterterrorism, human rights violations and impunity in Ingushetia", presented by human rights activists today in Moscow, runs that dozens of residents of Ingushetia became victims of kidnappings, murders and tortures.

The Islamic Committee of Russia has put forward five requirements to the country's leadership: admit Moslems to formation of home and foreign policy of the country; ensure free elections to power bodies in the republics "with the indigenous Muslim population", first of all in Northern Caucasus; admit Moslems to mass media; reconsider politically-motivated criminal cases against Moslems; and stop prohibiting Islamic books.

On June 24, the Nasiminskiy District Court of the capital of Azerbaijan, presided by Judge Shakhin Abdullaev, has continued the trial of Sergey Strekalin, accused of giving a knife wound on March 13, 2008, to Agil Halil, employee of the "Azadlyg" (Freedom). The judge has ruled that the victim should take part in the trial.

The Freedom House human rights organization has published its 2008 report on the progress of democracy in the transitive countries, according to which the aggregate democracy indicator in Armenia went down.

The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) has expressed a "serious concern" with deterioration of the situation with human rights in Azerbaijan and demanded immediate release of the arrested journalists.

The Supreme Court of Kabardino-Balkaria has made a decision to recruit new candidates for the jury, since as a result of duly motivated withdrawals, today only 6 persons remained out of 145 candidates.