News

Unidentified gunmen opened automatic fire at the Lada car in which head of the village administration Alvi Valiyev was driving at 9:45 p.m. on April 15.

Residents of Dagestan's Tsumadinsky and Botlikhsky districts held an unauthorized meeting, demanding that immediate measures be taken in connection with a disappearance of their friends.

Human rights organizations, NGOs, and students held a meeting in the center of Yerevan on April 15.

The draft resolution was submitted by representatives of the European Union, who believe Moscow must be more active in stopping what they consider to be violence against civilian Chechens on the part of the federal forces.

Albert Bazeian, a leader of the party Anrapetutiun (Republic), said they were going to turn to the European Court of Human Rights in view of the illegal closure of the party's office and the damage done to it.

By means of it, qualified lawyers will give primary advice to the suffered.

"I want Tbilisi to know that the November [2003] developments will not repeat themselves in the Adjarian autonomy. The local population will defend the elected power to the end," said Djemal Gogitidze.

The opposition is ready to guarantee safety for Armenian President Robert Kocharian, said leader of the opposition National Unity party Artashes Gegamian.

Defense Minister of the Republic of South Osetia Zelim Muldarov was found dead in his flat in Tskhinvali in the morning of April 15. The cause of his death has not been established so far.

Ruzanna Khachatrian gave a written undertaking not to leave a place.

The military assert they know who leads the bandits in spite of the fact that no member of the gang that attacked Ishkhoy-Yurt has been captured.

"We hope that the tragedy in the village of Rigakhoy will be thoroughly investigated nevertheless, and the guilty will be punished," reads the statement by the Memorial Center.

Akhmad Kadyrov says he has had no contacts at all, telephone talks included, with Aslan Maskhadov ever since the second Chechen campaign broke out late in summer 1999.

Zagra Muchuyeva, 51, who was on a wanted list, was detained in the Gudermes district in the east of Chechnya. She is suspected of preparing a number of crimes, RIA Novosti was told on April 14 by the official spokesman for the regional headquarters on the counter-terrorist operation in the North Caucasus.

Representatives of the Russian delegation said in Geneva that, despite its rather quiet nature, some clauses of the resolution are utterly not true to fact.

A cameraman of the Tbilisi-based Rustavi-2 TV channel was beaten up on April 14 near a bridge across the Choloki River that separates Georgia's autonomous region of Adjaria from the rest of the country. The incident occurred after a crowd of 200 to 300 Adjarians had not allowed the chairman of the Georgian Central Election Commission, Zurab Chiaberashvili, to enter the autonomy on his car.

Zurab Chiaberashvili voiced hope that the leaders of the autonomy understood what they did since the frustration of the elections is "a penal action, for which they will have to account."

People involved in the creation of the cache are being searched for.

"It should be taken into consideration that the Stavropol Danish Refugee Council was registered as a Russian non-governmental organization. It is an independent juridical person. The decision by the Stavropol Court cannot be rated as the liquidation of our organization as a whole," the Council's representative said via phone.

Headquarters of the opposition parties, and first of all of the National Unity and Republic parties, are still under the control of the police.