--BODY COUNTS The Federal Security Service claimed that more than 200 separatist fighters were killed and more than 900 people detained on suspicion of "involvement in terrorist activities" in Chechnya during 2004, Gazeta.ru reported on January 3. The rebels, for their part, claimed they killed... MORE

--MINE WOUNDS CEMETERY WATCHMAN Stepan Shupshanov, a resident of the Chechen village of Naurskaya, was hospitalized with multiple shrapnel wounds after stepping on a mine that had apparently been planted by separatist rebels in the cemetery where he worked as a watchman. On January 10,... MORE

--MURTAZALIEVA GETS NINE YEARS Vladimir Suvorov, lawyer for Zara Murtazalieva, the 21-year-old Chechen woman sentenced to nine years in prison January 17 for conspiring to carry out a terrorist attack in Moscow's Okhotny Ryad shopping center, recruiting two Russian women to act as suicide bombers,... MORE

--BESLAN VICTIMS' RELATIVES BLOCK HIGHWAY Hundreds of Beslan residents whose children and grandchildren were killed in last September's school massacre blocked a section of Rostov-Baku highway on January 20, demanding an objective investigation of the school siege and the resignation of North Ossetian President Aleksandr... MORE

--TYCOON: CHECHENS TRIED TO SELL ME A NUKE Boris Berezovsky has claimed that Chechens once offered to sell him a nuclear bomb. The exiled tycoon, who first made the claim in an interview published in Komsomolskaya pravda on February 8, later told the Associated Press... MORE

--ALKHANOV: REBELS' RELATIVES SHOULD URGE THEM TO GIVE UP On February 12, Chechen President Alu Alkhanov called on the relatives, friends and acquaintances of separatist fighters to urge them to surrender, Interfax reported. "Spring is ahead, and we have peaceful constructive work to do," Alkhanov... MORE

--KLEBNIKOV MURDER SUSPECTS EXTRADITED TO RUSSIA On February 22, Belarus handed over to the Russian authorities two Chechens suspected of murdering Paul Klebnikov, the veteran investigative journalists and editor of the Russia-language edition of Forbes, in Moscow last July. Newsru.com, citing Belarusian national television, reported... MORE

--WEBSITE CLAIMS BASAEV MET WITH CIA AGENTS The pro-Kremlin Utro.ru website reported February 28 that "military experts" believe that the video posted by the Kavkazcenter website earlier this month in which Chechen rebel warlord Shamil Basaev dispelled rumors that he had been killed was shot... MORE

--BESLAN WOMEN DEMONSTRATE Some 1,000 people, including members of the "Women of Beslan" group, held a demonstration in Vladikavkaz, the capital of North Ossetia, on March 8 after the federal Prosecutor General's Office refused to investigate the fact that clothes, other personal effects and body... MORE

--ALKHANOV RIDICULES MASKHADOV'S SUCCESSOR Chechen President Alu Alkhanov said that he knew nothing about Aslan Maskhadov's successor, Sheikh Abdul-Khalim Sadulaev, and that the Chechen Interior Ministry had no information about him. "I have never heard of this person before, and I am not the only... MORE