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The human rights organization "Amnesty International" (AI) said that the journalist Khadija Ismayilova was arrested in Azerbaijan for political reasons and recognized her as a "prisoner of conscience".

Moscow has hosted the Memorial Day of Journalists who perished while performing their professional duties; and its participants commemorated their colleagues assassinated in Dagestan and Kabardino-Balkaria.

A series of solo pickets in support of the Joint Mobile Group (JMG) of rights defenders and the Committee against Torture (CaT) in Chechnya was held on December 16 in Moscow without detentions; however, agents of the FSO (Russia's Federal Security Service) and FSB fixed the personal data of the activists who took part in the action.

Armenian rights defenders name overcrowded prisons, poor quality of medical care in them and problems with conditional early relief (CER) among main problems of the country's penitentiary system.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that on December 11, at the demand of the Russian "Roskomnadzor", the radio "Echo Moskvy-Makhachkala" was suspended. As stated by the spokesman of the "Roskomnadzor", the broadcasting was suspended, because the transmitter was broadcasting not from the place, which is specified in the permit for using radio frequencies.

In the opinion of Mairbek Agaev and Milrad Fatullaev, the heads of the weekly "Chernovik" and the newspaper "Nastoyascheye Vremya", respectively, the murder Murad Zalitinov will not have a noticeable effect on the situation in the Dagestan armed underground and will not reduce the level of tension in the republic.

Social packages will be no longer paid out to militants' relatives, the head of Chechnya Ramzan Kadyrov has stated, again pointing out that his republic will enforce the collective responsibility of families for actions of militants.

The field commander of Syrian militants Jundallah Shishani, whose death in the city of Cobani became known on December 8, originated from the same village in the Georgia's Pankisi Gorge as the commander of the northern sector of the "Islamic State" (IS) Tarkhan Batirashvili, also known as Omar Shishani.

In the Dagestani settlement of Vremenny, the special commission set up for assessing the damage made a repeated visit and found 52 houses unfit for living and subject to demolition. Residents of the settlement state large-scale destructions, looting and non-payment of compensations.

The lawyers of the Joint Mobile Group (JMG) of rights defenders, working in Chechnya, have appealed to law enforcement bodies asking them to conduct a check the fact of visit to their office of three men and the subsequent fire in the premises, as well as the fact of persecuting them by men in masks on December 13.

Residents of the city of Gudermes have reported the destruction, within the past two days, of two private houses inhabited by relatives of the militants killed during the attack on Grozny on December 4. According to journalist Elena Milashina, families with young children are now homeless.

According to preliminary information, law enforcers are conducting confiscation of documents relating to allocation of land plots in Khasavyurt and in the Khasavyurt District, the RIA "Dagestan" reports.

Construction workers are repairing the facade of the house in Grozny, which houses the burnt-out office of the Joint Mobile Group (JMG) of rights defenders. Local observers do not rule out that the fire in the office could be committed by people dissatisfied with their work.

The international human rights organization "Reporters Without Borders" (RWB) has published a report about the journalists, killed, kidnapped and jailed in 2014. Timur Kuashev, journalist and rights defender from Kabardino-Balkaria, is named as the only Russian reporter killed for professional reasons.

This year, Igor Tsagoev, a journalist from Nalchik, has been awarded the Andrei Sakharov Prize "For Journalism as a Deed". The list of finalists comprised journalists from Volgograd and Makhachkala.

The family of Magomed Kamalov, a resident of Izberbash, who was killed on December 12 in the Kayakent District of Dagestan, has not yet received his body for burial, said one of Kamalov's relatives. The GOVD (City Interior Division) of Izberbash has clarified that the casualty was not on the wanted list.

Prior to the fire in the office, some Chechen rights defenders had been deliberately spreading false information about the activities of the Committee against Torture (CaT) and inflating the situation, said Igor Kalyapin, the head of the CaT.

Relatives of Pakhrudin Magomedov, a missing resident of the Dagestani village of Tyube, have found his body in the morgue of the city of Kizilyurt, the Human Rights Centre (HRC) "Memorial" has reported.

Murad Zalitinov, a former head of the Kadar unit of "Imarat Kavkaz", was killed on December 12 in a special operation in Dagestan, said the press service of the Russian FSB.

The preliminary investigation into the criminal case of Rasul Djafarov, the coordinator of the campaign "Arts for Democracy", is over in Azerbaijan. After the rights defender gets acquainted with the indictment, the case will go to the Baku Court of Grave Crimes.