In a statement posted on the separatist Daymohk and Chechenpress website on October 23, Chechen rebel leader Dokku Umarov congratulated Muslims on the Id al-Fitr holiday marking the end of Ramadan. During Ramadan, the mujahideen of the Caucasus “continued to show the will and courage... MORE

--ZYAZIKOV POURS COLD WATER ON CHECHEN-INGUSH REUNIFICATION Ingush President Murat Zyazikov said on October 24 that neither Ingushetia nor Chechnya needs a merger of the two republics. “I, as president of Ingushetia, one of the presidents of the Vainakh people, want to state: today, we... MORE

Sharia Jamaat, the Dagestani rebel group, has shown the faces of its leaders by posting a video appeal on the Kavkaz-Center rebel website. This appeal, posted on the website two weeks ago, is in fact the first video made by the Dagestani rebels. Previously, all... MORE

In a surprise move, the Russian Defense Ministry assigned security responsibility for its team of military engineers in Lebanon to two detachments of Chechen troops, despite the outcry from human rights activists who cite the units for incidents of kidnapping, torture and murder. In Lebanon,... MORE

Police in Nazran, Ingushetia, on October 16 violently broke up a demonstration by dozens of activists demanding that the federal authorities find the killers of journalist Anna Politkovskaya. “In Nazran the meeting was broken up with brute force and five people were detained by the... MORE

Lidia Yusupova, the Chechen lawyer who worked for the Memorial human rights group’s office in Grozny and was nominated this year for the Nobel Peace Prize, talked in an interview with Kavkazky Uzel published on October 17 about the telephone threat she received on October... MORE

Two federal servicemen were killed and four wounded in a gun battle with rebels in Achkoi-Martan district on October 18, Radio Liberty reported. The battle took place during an operation to track down a group of insurgents numbering 6-10, who had fired on servicemen from... MORE

Dmitry Grushkin of the Memorial human rights center told Interfax on October 17 that according to the group’s research, 1,948 people have been kidnapped in Chechnya since 2002, and that out of these, 685 were freed, 189 were killed, 1,040 disappeared and 34 are in... MORE

The Nizhegorod Oblast Court on October 13 granted a request from the regional prosecutor’s office to close down the Nizhny Novgorod-based Russian-Chechen Friendship Society (ORChD). Kavkazky Uzel reported that among the reasons cited by prosecutors for the group’s closure was the conviction last year of... MORE

On October 10, the Norwegian Refugee Council’s Internal Displacement Monitoring Center issued a report entitled, “An Uncertain Future: The Challenges of Return and Reintegration for Internally Displaced Persons in the North Caucasus.” The report states that while most internally displaced persons (IDPs) have been able... MORE