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On January 24, the parents of Sharvili Ramazanov, a teenager from Dagestan, who had earlier reported that their son was beaten by policemen, received a statement on refusal to initiate a criminal case against policemen of the Magaramkent ROVD (District Interior Division). The parents plan to appeal against this decision in court.

Today, the Sumgait City Court, chaired by Judge Zeigyam Guseinov, has finished the trial of Arif Ganiev, Deputy Chair of the Islamic Party of Azerbaijan (IPA).

The action "Empty Pots", organized by the NGO named "Union of Unemployed for Employment", was held near the building of parliament in Tbilisi.

For more than two years, photojournalists Olga Kravets, Maria Morina and Oksana Yushko have been making photos of the capital of Chechnya; their works are forming the multimedia project "Grozny: Nine Cities". To have the project finished, a fundraising campaign was launched on the Internet.

In connection with adoption of a bill on criminalization of denial of genocide by the Senate of France, broadcasting station Media FM in Azerbaijan removed songs performed by French singers and all the songs in the French language from the air today.

Two residents of Derbent kidnapped a resident of the same town and were keeping him by force in a cellar of a gym for the purpose of extortion of two million rubles from him. The kidnapped mad managed to escape and he did it by means of killing one of the abductors, the Ministry of Interior Affairs of Dagestan reports.

Discharge of treacle into the water area of the Black Sea occurred near the settlement of Volna, Temriuk district of Krasnodar region, at a sea terminal of "Food Ingredients" limited company, "Ecological Watch on North Caucasus" reports.

About 180 workers from Uzbekistan in Volgograd region have to spend the winter in tents in an open field being unable to go home because they have not received their salary.

Adam Gagiev, resident of the settlement of Ekazhevo, Nazran district, who disappeared in Ingushetia on January, 5, was found in a social rehabilitation center in Moscow.

Convicts in "Nubarashen" prison of Yerevan went on a hunger strike. The protestors sentenced to life imprisonment for murders demand reconsideration of their criminal cases.

The mitigation of sentences to those guilty of murdering Yuri Volkov adopted by the Russian Supreme Court will not lead to mass protests, said Mikhail Remizov, President of the National Strategy Institute. Fans of the "Spartak" FC also believe that shortening of the terms would not cause any broad social response.

Relatives of Aslan Cherkesov, a native of Nalchik, convicted to twenty years in prison for murdering Yegor Sviridov, are outraged by the decision of the Supreme Court of Russia to mitigate his term by two months only. Cherkesov's relatives and fellow-countrymen do not exclude new protest actions in his support.

Russia needs an authority to deal with interethnic relations; and in order to solve national problems, we should first find their roots - these are the ideas expressed by public activists, including those from the Russian Congress of Caucasian Nations (RCCN), who took part in the roundtable on "Russia's Interethnic and Inter-Confessional Challenges", held on January 24 in Moscow at the RIA "Novosti".

The chapter on Russia of the report of the Human Rights Watch (HRW) on human rights situation in the world highlights - along with concerns about the last December's parliamentary elections - a worry about the continuing human rights violations in Northern Caucasus. According to Tatiana Lokshina, the deputy head of the Moscow HRW office, the report point to the fact that little has changed here since early 1990s.

An official letter stating the refusal to hold a rally against power agents' lawlessness scheduled for January 27 in Makhachkala was sent to the Ministry of Justice of Dagestan by the organizer - Saadula Abusupyanov.

Opposition activists of the Civil Movement for Democracy "Public Chamber" (CMDPC) held a picket near the French Embassy to Azerbaijan. It was the third protest action in Baku over the past two days against the adoption by the French Senate of the bill that assumes criminalization of denial of the genocides, recognized as such by the laws of the country, including the Armenian Genocide.

The Georgian Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA) has reacted to the "World Report 2012: Georgia", published by the Human Rights Watch (HRW) and dealing with the dispersal of the protest action in Tbilisi on May 26, 2011, and absence of proper inquiry into the incident. Shota Utiashvili, the head of the information-analytical service of the MIA, has reported about an objective inquiry and punishment of those guilty.

Residents of the township of Voikova, Oktiabrskiy District of Grozny, report about forced eviction and demolition of their houses. According to the city authorities, this is caused by the large-scale reconstruction undertaken in the township.

The members of the Sochi Branch of the Russian Geographic Society (RGS) have appealed to Vladimir Putin, Russian Prime Minister and the head of the board of trustees of the Society, asking not to close the Branch. This was reported by Yulia Naberezhnaya, an RGS member.

Today, a resident of Kaspiysk Raziyat Musaeva has announced that during examination of the bodies of her sons Muslim and Malik Musaev, and of her brother Gadji Gadjiev their relatives found signs of torture on the body of her younger son.