DAGESTANI RIGHTS ACTIVIST GOES ON TRIAL

The trial of Dagestani human rights activist Osman Boliev will continue on January 30, Kavkazky Uzel reported on January 25. The previous court session in his trial had to be postponed because of the failure of prosecution witnesses to appear. Boliev, a resident of Khasavyurt, was detained last November during a traffic stop and subsequently charged with illegally possessing weapons after a grenade was allegedly found on him. His lawyer claims police planted the grenade on him.

The organization that Osman heads, “Romashka,” filed a complaint with the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg over an October 2004 abduction of another Khasavyurt resident (see Chechnya Weekly, December 8). According to Kavkazky Uzel, Boliev had also made public the fact that a six-year-old girl had been killed during a special operation by Dagestani security forces. The website was apparently referring to a March 2005 security operation that killed two militants suspected of murdering a policeman in Khasavyurt in December 2004. A six-year-old girl—the daughter of the man who owned the house in which the militants were staying—was reportedly also killed during the security operation (see Chechnya Weekly, March 16, 2005).

According to the Obshchestvenny Verdikt (Public Verdict) foundation, Boliev is being pressured because of his professional activities. The International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights (IHF) sent an open letter to Dagestan’s prosecutor, Rashidhan Magomedov, last December 5 expressing concern about Boliev’s arrest. The Vienna-based group said that case against Boliev was fabricated.