News

Editor-in-chief of PRIMA News Agency Alexander Podrabinek was told when he was questioned by FSB (Federal Security Service) on January 28 that criminal proceedings had been instituted in connection with disclosure of state secret in the books "FSB Blows Up Russia" and "LCG - Lubyanka Criminal Group."

Highlands and woodlands lying on the border between Chechnya's Achkhoy-Martan and Urus-Martan districts were battered on the night of January 27-28.

Last year a group of members of the European Parliament awarded the "Passport for Freedom" to Akhmed Zakayev, Minister of Culture in the Chechen government of President Maskhadov, shortly after the Danish authorities had rejected the application for extradition made by the Russian Federation.

Sad results of the incident that took place in the district center of Shali on January 20 are being reckoned in Chechnya. Then the northwestern outskirts of the town were shelled with missiles from a helicopter.

Khamzat Osmayev, the known Chechen doctor and body-builder abducted from his consulting room in the village of Pliyevo on January 12, was found in Ingushetia's Sunzhensky district.

Aleksandr Zhabsky, the Volgodonsk journalist who went on hunger strike almost a month ago, is not able to get out of bed now.

Specialists hold that the total sums of payments by insurance companies in Turkey will likely run up to hundreds of milliards of dollars.

People who want to print and distribute the seditious books "FSB Blows Up Russia" (see also here) and "LCG ? Lubyanka Criminal Group" on the territory of the Russian Federation can do it freely, without being afraid to infringe upon authors' rights, the Foundation for Civil Liberties announced yesterday.

Avto Beridze told journalists that first he had been threatened and then he had been offered a good job and privileges as a way of gaining him over.

The ruling circles in Azerbaijan are incensed over the report by Human Rights Watch (HRW), an international human rights organization, on the human rights situation in the country.

Speaking about the Georgian foreign policy, Mr Saakashvili declared, "Georgia will be neither pro-Russian nor pro-American. It will be pro-Georgian and European."

The open letter reads, "I would obviously be very glad to be able to meet you to discuss whether, and in what way, you can contribute to restore hope to the Chechens and dignity to Europe, with respect, at least, to more specifically humanitarian questions."

"There have been no incidents in which Russian peacekeeping units incurred losses in Abkhazia's Gali district," the ministry's press service reported.

"Ecological conditions in Chechnya today are very bad, which is a result of the hostilities," Aleksandr Cherkasov, an activist of the Human Rights Center "Memorial", said in Strasbourg.

Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Jan Egeland announced it on January 27, while meeting with Ingush President Murat Zyazikov during a short visit to Ingushetia.

There are 12 thousand IDPs from the zone of the Georgian-Osetian conflict among them and 250 thousand IDPs from Abkhazia. 3 thousand refugees from Chechnya are living in Georgia today too.

Avto Beridze was detained not long before the action of protest which was to be held in Batumi by activists of the movement, who demand that Adjarian leader Aslan Abashidze should resign.

District police departments of Grozny plan to hold a joint action soon to deport Tajik Gypsies from the territory of the Chechen Republic.

At the end of 2003, the Shamayev father and son were detained by officers of Russian security agencies on the road leading to Molsovkhoz 15 and taken away in an unknown direction.

A local Tazbiyev was killed by officers of Russian security agencies in the course of the so called "address purges" in the village of Tsotsin-Yurt, Chechnya's Kurchaloy district, on January 26.