News

Lone militants make use of surprise factor to attack law enforcers, but the use of improvised means in the attack on the traffic police post in Magas became evidence of the weakening of the armed underground, military experts and a Caucasus expert believe.

Law enforcers tortured British citizen Magomed Abubakarov, a native of Chechnya, in attempts to force him to confess working for foreign intelligence agencies. Magomed Abubakarov is being denied medical care at a SIZO (pre-trial prison).

Zainulabidin Mirzabekov spent 12 years proving that the charge of selling heroin brought against him was falsified, and he spent eight years in custody. The man requests court to oblige the state to pay 414 million roubles in compensation for unlawful criminal prosecution.

The opening of a terrorism prevention centre at the Beslan School has sparked a mixed reaction among the victims. The school territory should have been preserved, says Emma Tagaeva. In his turn, Misikov believes that the centre is necessary in order to preserve the memory of the terror act.

The attack on the traffic police post at the entrance to Magas, as a result of which policemen killed a man armed with a screwdriver, was preceded by a similar incident that occurred in Grozny, the capital of Chechnya, in November 2022.

Kevin Lik's conviction has not been expunged, the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA) of Adygea has informed.

Idris Fargiev, a policeman, has been sentenced to five years in penal colony within the case of beating Timur Derbichev in the city of Magas (the capital of Ingushetia). Two other policemen were sentenced for bribe-taking for refusing to initiate a criminal case against Derbichev on charges of drug possession, to which he was forced to confess.

Appeals to the Prosecutor's Office (PO) in connection with the abuse of patients at the mental hospital located in the village of Psedakh (Malgobek District of Ingushetia) yielded no fruit, while there are still patients there, who have no relatives or whose families have no way to transfer them to another place.

No kidnapping statistics is currently run in Chechnya, as relatives of missing people are afraid to make disappearances public, human rights defenders have pointed out. Illegal detentions in Chechnya continue, but only most resonant cases become known.

Many passers-by took pictures of the picket in support of Abdulmumin Gadjiev and scanned a QR code to learn more about his persecution, reported Magomed Magomedov, a deputy editor-in-chief of the Dagestani weekly newspaper “Chernovik” (Rough Draft). Abdulmumin Gadjiev continues to write articles under arrest and publish them in the “Chernovik”.

The statements voiced by the Secretary of the Russian Security Council Sergey Shoigu about radicals’ attempts to displace secular laws in Northern Caucasus with Sharia norms are a signal to the leaders and officials of the regions, analysts note.

After 20 years, the authorities have still failed to give a specific answer to how terrorists managed to organize the school capture in Beslan in 2004, where more than three hundred people perished, journalists have stated.

Parliamentary elections in Azerbaijan, fires and drones in the Caucasus, parliamentary elections in Georgia, persecution of pacifists and activists in Southern Russia, anniversary of the terror act in Beslan, and official data on the natives of Southern Russia who perished in Ukraine, – see the review of these and other events in the Caucasus during the week of August 26-September 1, 2024, prepared by the “Caucasian Knot”.

Mourning events were held in North Ossetia to mark the 20th anniversary of school capture in Beslan. There, at School No. 1, the mourning ceremony began with the ringing of the school bell; its participants commemorated the victims of the terror act.

The case materials on an extremist community contain no proofs of the guilt of Aslan Naptugov and Oleko Kuzhev, residents of the city of Cherkessk, their advocates have stated. Naptugov treats his criminal case as political persecution.

The practices of kidnapping and enforced disappearances in the regions of Northern Caucasus, primarily in Chechnya, are a legacy of two Chechen campaigns. This issue is very acute due to authorities' repressions, but the fight against these practices must be continued. This was stated by the participants of the online conference of human rights defenders, organized by the "Memory Project" team jointly with the "Vyorstka" (Layout)* outlet.

The non-commercial organization (NCO) "Civil Initiative against Environmental Crime"* has been added to the register of foreign agents, the Russian Ministry of Justice (MoJ) has informed.

The Slavyansk-on-Kuban City Court has fined a local resident by 30,000 roubles, treating his comments posted in the "VKontakte" social network as discredited the Russian Army.

The cassation instance has upheld the sentence of Andzor Kudaev, a resident of the Kabardino-Balkarian Republic (KBR), who was sentenced to six years in penal colony on charges of aiding terrorism and possessing weapons. The instance has found the defence's arguments that Kudaev had confessed under torture to be untenable.

Sulumbek Yandyrkhanov, a former employee of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA), has been sentenced to four and a half years of imprisonment for beating a detained resident of Magas. The above information is reported on the Telegram channel of the “Travmpunkt” human rights project.