The North Caucasus District Military Court in Rostov-on-Don on April 13 placed Captain Eduard Ulman and two other GRU special forces officers accused of murdering six Chechen civilians in January 2002 on the national wanted list after the three failed to show up for their... MORE

On April 18, Kenneth Roth, executive director of the New York-based Human Rights Watch, charged that European institutions have been inefficient in defending civil liberties in Russia despite the countless monitoring bodies that have been set up solely for this purpose and cited Chechnya as... MORE

On April 12, Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov confirmed three deputy prime ministers who were earlier nominated by the republic’s parliament. According to ITAR-Tass, Adam Delimkhanov was named first deputy prime minister, Abdulkakhir Izrailov was named deputy prime minister and head of the presidential and governmental... MORE

After the Russian leadership’s triumphal statements that the war in Chechnya is over, Russian generals have once again started to point at the security problems in the region. Nikolai Rogozhkin, the commander of the Interior Ministry’s Internal Troops, was forced to admit during a March... MORE

“I share the concern voiced by the authors of the report. And it seems to me that analysts of the Department of State drew quite justified conclusions regarding the situation with human rights in Russia. I mean the electoral law, freedom of speech and the... MORE

- Policeman Killed in Makhachkala Unknown gunmen in the Dagestani capital of Makhachkala on April 5 shot and killed a police officer in charge of investigating economic crimes, ITAR-Tass reported. According to a duty officer in the Makhachkala branch of the Interior Ministry, the murdered... MORE

The Caucasus Times reported on April 7 that Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov has signed a decree approving the membership of the republican and district conscription commissions in preparation for a resumption of the military draft in the republic. The website quoted Lieut.-Col. Sultan Umarov, deputy... MORE

The European Court of Human Rights on April 5 awarded 51,732 euros (more than $69,000) in compensation to Asmart Baysayeva, whose husband disappeared in 2000 in the settlement of Podgornoye, near Grozny, during a security sweep by federal troops. The court also ruled that Russia... MORE

The website of the Memorial human rights group (Memo.ru) on April 5 published an open letter from 13 leading Russian human rights activists to President George W. Bush, protesting his Oval Office meeting with Vladimir Shamanov, the retired Russian general accused of war crimes in... MORE

The website of Nezavisimaya gazeta (Ng.ru) reported on April 8 that two Interior Ministry servicemen, including a commander of the elite Sever (North) battalion, were killed in a wooded area near the settlement of Bas-Gordali in Chechnya’s Nozhai-Yurt district after their patrol came across around... MORE