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The wife of the arrested journalist, Polad Aslanov, has pointed out to the Azerbaijani President to the political motive for her husband's case and asked to stop persecuting him.

The only checkpoint on the border with Georgia will stop operating from December 30 to January 3, the KGB (State Security Committee) of South Ossetia has announced.

The consent of Alexander Emelianenko to fight against Ramzan Kadyrov has caused doubts among social network users that the fight will be fair. Fans have indicated that Emelianenko had dropped the honour of a professional athlete by accepting Kadyrov's challenge.

Law enforcers have deployed an additional post at the "Tangim" Mosque. The practice of detentions after Friday namaz (prayer) has been stopped, but mosque visitors are still put on the so-called "prophylactic registration", believers assert.

Without any explanations, law enforcers have detained Islam and Umar Djabrailov in the village of Yandi, Achkhoi-Martan District, and took them to some unknown place, a woman-resident of Chechnya has stated.

The parliamentary election campaign in Azerbaijan is held amid the restriction of political freedoms; while the decision to dissolve the parliament is contrary to the Constitution and international democratic practice. This was stated by the NGO "Institute of Democratic Initiatives" (IDI).

A court in the Volgograd Region found natives of Chechnya guilty of extortion, despite the appeal of a brother of the alleged organizer of the criminal grouping to Ramzan Kadyrov urging to somehow defend them.

On December 26, the court ruled to return the operative criminal investigator, suspected of torturing Musa Aliev, from the house arrest into the SIZO (pre-trial prison). The court plans to consider the arrest of the second suspect.

Parviz Guluzade, a rap singer, known under the pseudonym Paster, has been arrested in Azerbaijan for 30 days on charges of petty hooliganism and disobedience to the police. The persecution of the rapper has to do with his creativity and political views, oppositional activists have suggested.

The court has sentenced Mustafa Vyshegurov, an activist, to a year and five months in settlement colony after finding him as a participant of clashes with law enforcers during a rally in Magas. Vyshegurov has pled guilty, but noted that the court disregarded his repentance.

In the village of Kadi-Yurt, needy families have moved from barracks into the houses built in less than a month by the order of the head of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov.

The Muftiate of Chechnya has re-elected Salakh Mezhiev as its head. Local residents associated the re-election of Salakh Mezhiev with his support for the policy of the republic's leaders.

Natives of Dagestan appreciate the fact that a street in the Turkish city of Yalova was named after poetess Kadriya Temirbulatova. Members of the Nogai Diaspora treat that fact as a landmark event. The initiative to name the street after the poetess recalled the ideas of pan-Turkism, but the ideology is not the cornerstone of the politics adopted in modern Turkey, political analysts note.

The court has refused to transfer Orkhan Bakhyshly, an activist of the Popular Front Party of Azerbaijan (PFPA), to a settlement colony, as he had asked in his complaint.

The statements of Zamid Chalaev, the commander of the patrol-and-post (PPS) police regiment named after Akhmat Kadyrov, who blamed all the offenders as "traitors" and promised harsh punishments for them, fail to comply with either Islamic norms or Russian legislation. Zamid Chalaev's statements are an illustration of the legal nihilism prevailing in the republic, Caucasus experts and rights defenders believe.

The mission of the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) of the OSCE (Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe) has recommended sending 380 observers to the upcoming early parliamentary elections in Azerbaijan. Rights defenders believe that such a team of observers could contribute to the transparency of the election process.

The complaint of the blogger Eric Kituashvili, known under the nickname "Davidych", about some extortionists, who presented themselves as "Kadyrov people", was invented by him for self-promotion, the blogger, Dmitry Ivanov, has suggested.

Maxim Galkin did not want to give a concert in Chechnya, where people were forced to apologize for their statements about the power, and that fact emphasized his critical attitude to the political atmosphere in Russia. In the course of his concerts in Rostov-on-Don and Krasnodar, Maxim Galkin ridiculed the methods of the Vladimir Putin's ruling and the corruption of officials, in particular, Rauf Arashukov.

The authorities' refusals to extend the status of internally displaced persons (IDPs) led to a disastrous situation because of their housing problems, claimed IDPs from Chechnya, who came to a meeting with the Ingush Minister of National Policy on December 25. Out of 30 people, only the leader of the initiative group was admitted to the meeting with the Minister.

The positions of the Azerbaijani troops in the Karabakh conflict zone and in villages located on the border with Armenia were shelled from machine guns, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) of Azerbaijan reported.