News

The press conference titled "Chechnya, Ingushetia: the Safety of the Population and State of IDPs [internally displaced persons]" was held at the Independent Press Center in Moscow on April 20.

Andrey Babitsky was the only journalist who stayed in besieged Grozny when the storm of the city began.

According to Avtandil Galakhabadze, a leader of the Adjarian opposition movement Our Adjaria, a threat to the State system of Georgia will be created if the defense ministry does not take preventive measures.

Geliskhanov has become the fourth dead man extracted from the ruins of the destroyed house, according to official data.

Mandash Tsintsayeva (b. 1975) and her five children were killed when an air bomb hit her house.

Officers of Kadyrov's security service said they acted in conformity with the order received from Moscow according to which they must destroy all terrorist suspects.

"I do not understand what material interest made Roman Dumbadze come out of command of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief. We do not rule it out that he may have been pressured and even blackmailed," said Gela Bezhuashvili.

The goal of the survey it to disclose the real situation with access to information and freedom of expression in Nagorny Karabakh as well as to determine what problems in the given field people in the republic face with.

The party's leader Shalva Natelashvili calls upon the whole Georgia "to teach the forgers some good sense and to take part in the actions for the protection of self-respect."

"578 servicemen of the defense ministry and other security agencies of the country went missing on the territory of Chechnya from 1994 till 1 April 2004," reported Maria Fedulova, a member of the Presidential Commission on War Prisoners, Interned Persons, and the Missing.

The date of the parliament's first session has not been fixed yet. According to Nino Burdjanadze, it will sit on April 22 or 23.

The killed militants appeared to have been Wahhabis, a source in the Ingush interior ministry reported. The terrorists also proved to have been linked to Chechen militant groups.

The leader of Arab mercenaries was offering a prayer at a mountain base of Mojaheds when a bomb blew up near him, according to the Chechen rebel website Kavkaz Center.

Former commander of the Georgian interior ministry's 25th brigade Major-General Roman Dumbadze told a press conference on April 19 that he "places himself under the full authority of Adjarian head Aslan Abashidze."

The dead body of Artur Murzayev, a special operations unit commander of the Chechen President's security service, was found in the Oktyabrsky district of Grozny, the capital of Chechnya, in the evening of April 18.

Six majority deputies for the autonomy elected in the course of the 2 November 2003 parliamentary elections made such a decision after consultations with their voters.

The military tried to persuade the rebels into stopping resistance and releasing the hostages. After all the means to persuade them into voluntarily giving themselves up had been exhausted, the decision was made to storm the house.

When three hours passed after the detention, no formal charges had been brought against the detainees and no report had been drawn up.

Chairman of the Georgian Central Election Commission Zurab Chiaberashvili has made a request to commission members today to release him from his duties.

Al-Walid's bother, Bender al-Gamdi, said in his interview with the Al Hayat newspaper published today that he had been informed of the death of his brother in Chechnya. According to him, he received this information from a Chechen, a brother of Abu al-Walid's wife.