The Russian journalist Yelena Tregubova, target of an unsuccessful assassination attempt after she wrote a candid book about life inside Putin's Kremlin, has fled to a foreign country. She is so fearful of a second attempt, according to an article in the March 7 Washington... MORE

Moscow's attempts to win the release of two Russian intelligence officers imprisoned in Qatar remained stalled as of March 8. According to a March 6 article in Gazeta.ru, the Persian Gulf Sheikhdom has extended the period during which the two are to remain under arrest.... MORE

By Zaindi Choltaev and Michaela Pohl Human rights organizations in Russia have obtained copies of a directive used to carry out special operation "Hurricane-4," a set of special anti-Chechen and anti-Caucasian security measures imposed on major Russian cities in recent months and weeks. This document... MORE

The U.S. State Department's latest annual report on human rights around the world, released on February 25 and available on the department's website, www.state.gov, included tough criticisms of kidnappings in Chechnya. The report quoted the estimates of such respected, independent human rights monitors as Memorial... MORE

After the latest terrorist attack in Moscow, we again are hearing proposals to bring back the death penalty, calls to "torch them with a red hot iron" and to "go to the end," and demands for applying the principle of collective responsibility to entire ethnic... MORE

--KICKBACKS TO KADYROV Requesting anonymity, several members of the Kadyrov administration's police have told Timur Aliev of Prague Watchdog that they have to pay substantial kickbacks to Ramzan Kadyrov, head of his father's private army. Aliev wrote in a March 3 article that such payments... MORE

Yury Shchekochikhin, the antiwar journalist and Duma member who died last year under mysterious circumstances (see Chechnya Weekly, July 10, 2003), preserved this haunting quotation from a conversation of his with Chechen diplomat Akhmed Zakaev. It may be found in Shchekochikhin's book, Forgotten Chechnya, Moscow,... MORE

The International Helsinki Group has called on the Russian authorities to annul the results of last October's presidential election in Chechnya. According to a February 24 report on the website Grani.ru, the human rights organization cited the "flagrant violations" of free and fair procedures which... MORE

A detention center in the south Russian town of Mineralnye vody is the new home of seven Russian citizens. The seven, transferred on February 28 to the custody of the Russian government, had been held at Guantanamo Bay with other alleged terrorists captured in Afghanistan.... MORE

In the southern Volga Saratov region, parents of soldiers serving with the federal forces in Chechnya have formed a committee to monitor the difficulties that their sons face. According to a March 1 article in Russky kurier, letters written by the soldiers to their parents... MORE