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Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina, members of the punk band Pussy Riot, have been questioned in connection with a report about a theft at the hotel, the Sochi UVD (Interior Department) reports.

In Sochi, the three Olympic Villages located in the Imereti Lowland and in Krasnaya Polyana, opened – for the days of the Olympic Games – special prayer rooms, serviced by volunteers and clergymen, representing the world's major religions: Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism and Protestantism.

The term of the administrative arrest imposed on the ecologist Evgeny Vitishko, currently kept at the special detention facility in the city of Tuapse, has expired on Tuesday at 1:20 p.m. Moscow time, said the lawyer Alexander Popkov.

On Tuesday, Olga Noskovets, an activist of the "Ecological Watch for Northern Caucasus" (EcoWatch) and a member of the City Council of the "Yabloko" Party, was set free from the police division of the micro-district of Blinovo in Sochi.

The Maikop city public organization "Adyge-Khase-Circassian Council" has demanded the release Asker Sokht, the head of the public organization "Adyge-Khase" of the Krasnodar Territory, from custody. The demand was supported by Ilyas Soobtsokov, the ex-chairman of the Adygea regional public organization for revival of national traditions of the Circassian nation "Adyge-Khase".

Today, the former police officer Dmitry Pavlyuchenkov, who had been sentenced to 11 years of imprisonment under the case of the murder of the observer of the "Novaya Gazeta" Anna Politkovskaya, performed as a witness, and repeated his earlier testimony about the preparation for the crime.

Tonight, the Magistrate Court in Sochi has decided to punish the Sochi activist David Khakim with 30 hours of correctional works, said the lawyer Alexander Popkov.

The Spiritual Administration of Muslims (SAM) of the Stavropol Territory has begun implementing the decision of the City Court about dismantling of the minaret of the unfinished mosque in Pyatigorsk, the Muftiat of the Territory said on February 16.

As reported by Elena Samoshina, a hunger-striker, the action in Volgograd is continued by 26 parents of many children and parents of children with disabilities. Today, the protesters were visited by representative of Russia's Investigating Committee and State Duma Deputy.

Today, the Frontier Service of the Georgian Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA) has again stopped Saikhan Muzaev, an ethnic Chechen, who took the citizenship of Georgia in 2011, from boarding the flight Tbilisi-Trabzon-London, said Alex Shoshikelashvili, the head of the Human Rights Institute.

Valery Vitkin, a hospitalized participant of the hunger strike, held by parents of many children and parents of disabled children in Volgograd, has begun taking food, said Georgy Goryachevskiy, another hunger-striker.

On 16 February, in Mashtots Park in Yerevan, members of the initiative group named DEM.AM held a public debate and drafted a plan of action against the country's pension reform. Activists announced their intention to switchover from local actions to broad-scale ones and urged all the opponents of the new pension system to hold a one-day strike.

During the week from February 10 to February 16, 2014, the armed conflict in Northern Caucasus affected at least 10 people, nine of them were killed and one was wounded. These are the results of calculations made by the "Caucasian Knot" based on its own materials and information from other open sources.

The ruling passed on the case of Evgeny Vitishko is politically motivated; while sending Vitishko to a colony-settlement has to do with his report on the environmental damage inflicted during the preparation of Sochi for the Olympics, said the participants of the action in support of the ecologist, held in Moscow.

As reported by Aminat Malsagova, the Chair of the Public Supervisory Commission (PSC) of Chechnya, a native of Chechnya, who is serving his sentence in a colony in Karelia, had been tortured and is currently in hospital in Vologda.

Evgeny Vitishko, an activist of the "Ecological Watch for Northern Caucasus" (EcoWatch), who is under arrest, has gone on hunger strike, as another activist of the "EcoWatch" told the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent.

Today in Volgograd, activists of the public movement named "The Essence of Time" and of the all-Russian public organization of family defence "All-Russian Parental Resistance" held pickets against the closure of libraries in Volgograd.

On February 16, a rally was held in Baku by residents of the central city district consisting of old one- and two-storey private houses. The protesters were unhappy with the authorities' plan to demolish the district and build a park area instead.

The arrest of Asker Sokht, the Chair of the Krasnodar Territorial "Adyge-Khase", will consolidate the Circassian movement, since now even his critics speak in his support, said Adam Bogus, the chairman of "Adyge-Khase" of Adygea, who did not rule out that Circassian activists would hold a series of protest actions in support of Asker Sokht.

This morning, in the yard of Boris Chochiev, the head of the presidential administration of South Ossetia in Tskhinvali, an explosion occurred that hurt nobody, said a source from the administration.