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Some of the local businessmen, who were selling wedding dresses in Grozny, now plan to leave Chechnya in order to sell their goods and payback the debts; and to close up their business in fear of repressions from local authorities.

The Chechen leadership does everything possible for establishing the whereabouts of the people, who had disappeared or had been kidnapped in the course of counterterrorist operations (CTOs). This was stated by President of the Chechen Republic Ramzan Kadyrov during his meeting with Thomas Hammarberg, Commissioner of the Council of Europe for Human Rights.

On September 8, about two hundred residents of Derbent in Dagestan blocked the central street of the city. The reason of this protest was kidnapping of Sirazhudin Shafiev committed on that very day. As reported by Svetlana Isaeva, head of the organization "Mothers of Dagestan for Human Rights", Shafiev's relatives suspect that he was kidnapped by power agents.

Isa Yamadaev, brother of the Hero of Russia Sulim Yamadaev, ex-commander of the special battalion "Vostok", has stated that a sniper's attack on him is being prepared.

Andrei Krasnenkov, advocate of the President of Chechnya Ramzan Kadyrov, has appealed against the refusal of the Moscow GUVD to open a criminal case against Oleg Orlov, chairman of the HRC "Memorial", to the Prosecutor's Office.

Maria Rozalskaya, an expert of the Information Analytical Centre "Sova", believes that before the appearance of the "Black Hawks" - a grouping of Caucasian nationals who persecute Russian nationalists, there were no precedents of this sort, and comparing the "Hawks" with the well-known St Petersburg "Red Skinheads" is unreasonable.

Today in the morning, in the city of Derbent, in the eyes of numerous witnesses, unidentified persons in camouflage and masks kidnapped Sirazhudin Shafiev, born in 1971, a resident of this city.

Chechnya shall solve the problem of searching kidnapped and missing persons. This was stated by Thomas Hammarberg, CE's Commissioner on Human Rights, and Russian Ombudsman Vladimir Lukin, who arrived in Chechnya on September 7.

On September 8, on the occasion of the International Journalists' Solidarity Day, a group of independent Azerbaijani journalists laid flowers to the tombs of Elmar Guseinov, editor-in-chief of the "Monitor" magazine, who was assassinated on March 2, 2005, at the threshold of his apartment, and Nadzhaf Nadzhafov, the first editor of the "Azadlyg" newspaper and the founder of modern Azerbaijani democratic press.

Militiamen and OMON (Special-Purpose Militia) fighters would not let miners-pensioners from the city of Zverevo, located in the Rostov Region, to block the Highway М-4 "Don". This was reported by one of the participants of the protest action.

The work of the HRC "Memorial" in the Chechen Republic can be resumed within the nearest weeks. On September 7, the employees of the Chechen branch of the HRC "Memorial" held a meeting and made a decision to restart their work in the republic.

Today at night after interrogation, Russian militaries have released four residents of Sakorintlo village, Kaspsk District, bordering on South Ossetia. According to the detainees, Russian soldiers detained them, when they crossed the conventional border while pasturing their cattle.

Tonight, a bomb in a wooden box was found in a children's playground in a dwelling district of the city of Stavropol. The bomb was neutralized by a robot-sapper.

The Russian version of the GQ magazine was published without the article "Vladimir Putin - Obscure Ascent to Power", which is present in its American version. The article by Scott Anderson deals with the investigation of terror acts in Russia in the end of 1990s and is based on the interview with Mikhail Trepashkin, a former agent of Russian special services, who told the American journalist about involvement of the FSB in the explosions of apartment houses in Moscow and Buinaksk.

The interim parliamentary commission, which was set up for studying the events on March 1, 2008, in Yerevan has made a decision to visit one of the warehouses of the Ministry of Defence (MoD) with the aim to check the facts presented in the report of the Fact-Finding Group about the events that on that the army warehouse was issuing military uniform to oligarchs' bodyguards.

"Ruined Mosques" - this was the topic of the roundtable held on September 7 at the Baku Media Centre on the initiative of the Centre in Defence of the Freedom of Worship and Religion (DEVAMM.) Demolition of three mosques, while in 2009 Baku was proclaimed the capital of the Islamic culture, is discrediting Azerbaijan before the Muslim world - this was the leitmotif of the roundtable.

Oppositionist Tigran Arakelyan, 18, kept in custody since July 5, has announced today that he refuses from medical held, and starting September 10 will go on termless dry hunger strike.

Thomas Hammarberg, Commissioner of the Council of Europe (CE) for Human Rights, arrives in Grozny. Leaders of human rights organizations of the republic hope to discuss at their meeting with Mr Hammarberg a lot of serious issues, including the problem of safety of the NGO employees who work in the region.

The Georgian Ombudsman Sozar Subari and leaders of oppositional parties of Georgia are against early relief of the four police officers, who had been sentenced to 8 years of imprisonment each for murdering a bank employee Sandro Girgvliani in early 2006.