News

A resident of Nagorno-Karabakh, who got lost and ended up in the area controlled by Azerbaijan, has been returned from captivity through the intervention of Russian peacemakers, Gegam Stepanyan, the Ombudsperson of Nagorno-Karabakh, told the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent on July 22.

A Baku court has found 13 persons captured in the vicinity of Gadrut guilty of crossing the border and illegal arms trafficking; the charge of terrorism was dropped. Each of them was sentenced to six years in prison.

A court refused to grant Ingush activists the status of witnesses in a case on seven leaders of protests against the border agreement with Chechnya. The court’s refusal can result in the exclusion of the testimony from the case, the defence declares.

In the Stavropol Territory, law enforcers detained eight suspected members of the extremist organization “At-Takfir wal-Hijra”*, banned in Russia.

Three families of refugees from Nagorno-Karabakh have been granted houses in the Lori Region from the “Children of Armenia” charity foundation, and other ten families are expecting to be settled in August.

In Baku, a court has recognized Russian citizen Eduard Dubakov as a participant in the battles against Azerbaijan in Nagorno-Karabakh and sentenced him to 10 years of imprisonment in a high-security penal colony.

Takhir Makhmudov and Yasin Mekhraliev, workers of a construction company, were injured in a mine explosion during reconstruction works in Nagorno-Karabakh, the Prosecutor’s Office of Azerbaijan reported.

Djambulat Gasanov, a human rights defender, has challenged in court a policeman's ban on video filming a picket in Makhachkala. Law enforcers are unreasonably demanding not to film them for fear of video recording of violations, local activists have suggested.

A group of environmentalists was inspecting an illegal garbage dump near the Klin-Yar nature monument when the landfill owner rammed their car by his jeep; he hit one of the activists and threatened others with violence.

Sergey Melikov, the acting head of Dagestan, has met Murtazali and Patimat Gasanguseinov in the village of Goor-Khindakh and planted trees in memory of their murdered sons. According to Murtazali Gasanguseinov, Melikov promised to help the family.

A woman from the Chegem District was accused of torturing her son only after the boy's father had learnt about beatings, while the guardianship bodies knew nothing about the family problems. The Nalchik large family, where the girl beaten by her stepfather died, was known to the officials as a problem one, but they did not notice the child abuse.

The shooting in the direction of the dwelling settlement of Heydarabad of the Nakhichevan Autonomous Republic (NAR), bordering on Armenia, caused no material damage to local residents, but worried them.

Marina Tumgoeva, a resident of North Ossetia, has met the head of the Department of the Russian FSIN (Federal Penitentiary Service) for the Saratov Region and received permit to visit her convicted brother, who complains about custody conditions at his colony and pressure over his beard.

The Dagestan "Nadezhda" (Hope) Fund has organized, at people's requests from Makhachkala, Kaspiysk and other cities, conducting sacrifices on Eid al-Adha, followed by freezing and gradual distribution of meat to those in need. The option to order a sacrifice remotely has turned out to be very much in demand during the pandemic, the staff of the Fund has explained.

Pavel Zaporozhtsev, a resident of Maikop, was severely beaten by law enforcers and died from injuries in a hospital, his relatives claimed. According to Valery Brinikh, a member of the Human Rights Council (HRC) under the leader of Adygea, investigators are trying to hush up the case.

Today, in Saratov, a sister of prisoner Timur Tumgoev has held a solo picket and claimed that the Investigating Committee of the Russian Federation (ICRF) and the Prosecutor’s Office should take measures to protect her brother, a native of North Ossetia, who complains about the conditions of detention in the penal colony in the Saratov Region.

Today, in Yerevan, a court has granted the defence motion for the release on bail of Armen Charchyan, the chief of the Izmirlian Medical Centre, who spent a month under arrest in a case on pressure on his subordinates before the parliamentary elections.

The Austrian police are investigating a case on an attempt to blow up refugee Said-Khusein Magomadov, who criticized Ramzan Kadyrov in his blog.

Soldiers of the Azerbaijani Armed Forces prevent residents of the border community of Tekh in the Syunik Region of Armenia from working in the fields; they detained a local combine operator and threatened him, Arman Tatoyan, the Armenian Ombudsperson has made public villagers' complaints today.

The cities of Nalchik and Baksan, as well as villages of six districts of the Kabardino-Balkarian Republic (KBR), see systematic water supply outages, local residents complain.