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"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.

In Chechnya, the issue of the new uniform for Grozny schools is still very hot. Pupils' parents assert that the new uniform is imposed by bureaucrats and express their extreme discontent with the quality and cost of the schoolchildren's clothes.

The dissemination in Makhachkala of leaflets with the threat of blood feud against members of "Dagestan illegal armed formations (IAFs)" was done by the persons who know the situation in Dagestan quite well. This was stated by Gadjimurad Kamalov, publisher of the Dagestan weekly named "Chernovik" (Blueprint) and director general of the LLC "Freedom of Speech" (Makhachkala).

On September 3, certain strangers, who presented themselves as tax inspectors, came to the registration addresses of Oleg Orlov, chairman of the Board of the Human Rights Centre (HRC) "Memorial", and Alexander Cherkasov, a member of Board, and tried to find out details of their life.

The report of the Secretary General of the United Nations "Situation with Internally Displaced Persons and Refugees from Abkhazia in Georgia" states that now Georgia keeps over 293 thousand IDPs (internally displaced persons).

Georgia has received fines from the company – owner of the ship "Buket", which was detained in the neutral waters, and released the citizens of Azerbaijan who were onboard.

The heads of three international organizations – Article 19, Human Rights Watch (HRW) and International Pen Committee (IPC) – have addressed their open letter to President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliev, asking him to ensure the supremacy of law at the trial of young bloggers Adnan Gadjizade and Emin Milli, and calling him to stop suppression of the freedom of speech in Azerbaijan.

The delegation of Russia at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) may suspend its work, if the autumn session will see the majority of delegates support deprivation of its vote on the issue of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

Khadishat Chebieva, a resident of Ingushetia, is afraid for the life of her son, who was kidnapped, as she asserts, by employees of some power agencies.

Georgiy Tsagareishvili, a Georgian MP, asserts that already for more than a week up to 10 prisoners, who serve their terms in the Second Rustavi Prison, are holding their hunger strike. However, the Ministry for Punishment Enforcement, Probation and Legal Aid, denies this information.

Aram Gabrielyan, head of the Environment Department of the Ministry for Nature Protection of Armenia, said that construction of small Hydroelectric Power Plants (HPPs) breaks the ecological balance and results in appearance of problems in the environment.

Owners of the wedding saloons in the capital of Chechnya were imperatively advised, at a meeting at the city Mayoralty, to stop selling wedding dresses, made not in the traditional Chechen style. The city authorities assure that this measure is of only "recommendatory character." However, the shop owners talk about "demand" and "prohibition" and are afraid of going bankrupt.

Rustam Dzortov, who was killed during a special operation conducted in the Ingush village of Barsuki, was in command of all the militants in Ingushetia and one of the organizers of the murder attempt on President of the republic Yunus-Bek Evkurov. This was reported by a representative of the press service of the Department of the Federal Security Bureau (DFSB) for Ingushetia.

The Supreme Court of Kabardino-Balkaria has announced a two-week break in litigation on the Nalchik attack. The last court session on September 3 listened to evidences of Alik Shorov, an employee of the local Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA), who was, on October 13, 2005, the head of the service of district militiamen.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) welcomes the decision to return the case of three suspects of murdering Anna Politkovskaya, an observer of the "Novaya Gazeta", to additional investigation before its repeated delivery to the court. This is said in the statement of Nina Ognianova, coordinator of the programme for Europe and Middle Asia, which has arrived to the "Caucasian Knot".

The family of the Georgian journalist Levan Gudadze, who criticized the regime of President of Georgia Mikhail Saakashvili, applied for political asylum in South Ossetia. This was reported by Murat Dzhioev, head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of South Ossetia.

In northeast of Moscow, an unidentified gunman shot dead Rasul Khalilov, a native of Azerbaijan, a student of the Moscow Institute of Economy and Culture and a figurant in the case about an attack in spring last year of a group of nationalists from the organization named "Black Hawks" on two Moscow students. This was reported by Sergey Loginov, advocate of one of the defendants.