News

The Georgian Foreign Ministry does not rule out the possibility that diplomatic and service passports of members of the Revival political party, led by Aslan Abashidze, will also be annulled.

"We implement the project in spite of the fact that the Department of Justice in Stavropol Territory refused to register us on March 1," noted chairman of the Caucasian Youth Human Rights League Maksim Abrakhimov.

The organizers of the action say they want to understand the reasons for the ongoing tragedy and to reveal concrete people responsible for the war in Chechnya.

The Abkhazian social and political movement Amtsakhara accuses Abkhazian authorities of political terror and the murder of its activists Aleksandr Psardia. The movement's political council issued a statement in connection with the death of Psardia on March 23, in which it accuses the authorities of persecuting the opposition and terrorizing political opponents.

The action was initiated by the Society for Russian-Chechen Friendship and sponsored by the Moscow-based Fund for the Support of Democracy and Social Progress.

The withdrawal of the 3-thousand-strong military contingent will not adversely affect the fighting efficiency of the Russian military group in Chechnya, a source at the republican military commandant's office said to the Caucasian Knot correspondent.

The researches found out that almost all of the newspapers exploited nationalist themes. The most intolerant regional newspapers are Vechernyaya Ryazan, Kuban Segodnya, and Krasnodarsky Kuryer.

As reported by the website of Chechen separatists Ichkeria, the Chechen military command decided to be indulgent with respect to the Russian soldiers proceeding from the fact that they did not put up armed resistance and gave frank evidence.

On March 17, Moscow's Meshchansky District Court heard an administrative case against Nikolai Khramov, secretary of Russian Radicals and an organizer of a meeting for peace and democracy in Chechnya.

A press conference devoted to the presentation of the compact disk "Victims of Political Terror in the USSR" is to be held at the concert hall of the Central House of Journalists on March 24.

The reason for it is that the authorities officially announced the camp would be closed on April 1.

"It is true that the extremely tense atmosphere in Adjaria has been relieved. But gunmen in masks are standing at Choloki again, there are tanks hidden in the land again," said one of the leaders of the right opposition.

Two Russian soldiers were killed and five others injured when a radio-controlled mine exploded in the village of Tsa-Vedeno in the Vedeno district. Meanwhile, a 16-year-old schoolboy was killed and three others injured in Urus-Martan by an artillery shell launched by the Russian military.

The purges were caused by the murder of Chersi Gatayev, deputy chief of the Achkhoy-Martan district police department, and his driver, Inderbiyev, which was committed by a group of unknown people on a road between the villages of Davidenko and Noviy Sharoy on March 19.

The funeral of Ilyas Khatatayev was held on March 19 in the village of Serzhen-Yurt, Chechnya's Shali district. The man was killed by a gunman in camouflage uniform in broad daylight in the center of Grozny the day before.

A Russian contract soldier opened fire without provocation in a Chechen village, killing two local men.

The national cultural center of Osetins living in Kabardino-Balkaria held a conference in Nalchik on March 21.

In accordance with the plan of the exercises, mobilization reserves will be called up on the first day for the purpose of personnel replacement.

A complaint lodged by the Movement for Human Rights with the Moscow City Court in connection with the case on the hostage taking on Dubrovka was expected to be considered on March 24, but court officials "confessed they had lost the complaint," head of the movement Lev Ponomarev said to the Ekho Moskvy Radio.

The dead body of Iskra Morokhia, an officer of the Security Service of the Autonomous Republic of Abkhazia in exile, was found on March 18 with multiple bullet wounds in the village of Chuburkhindzh, Abkhazia's Gali district.