The separatist Chechenpress news agency on May 27 published several decrees issued by rebel leader Abdul-Khalim Sadulaev, one of which named London-based rebel emissary Akhmed Zakaev as the rebel government’s minister of foreign affairs. Zakaev replaces Usman Ferzauli, who will now serve as Zakaev’s deputy.... MORE

A Chechen government delegation headed by Chechen President Alu Alkhanov and including the speaker of the lower house of Chechnya’s parliament, Dukvakha Abdurakhmanov, was set to take part in a Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) roundtable meeting in Strasbourg, France, on June... MORE

The separatist Chechenpress news agency on May 29 published an appeal by the chairman of the board of the Society of Concentration (Filtration) Camp Prisoners in the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, Vakha Banzhaev, which claimed that over the last 12 years more than 250,000 Chechens... MORE

During the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, a ready market developed for the seizure and sale of foreign individuals to U.S. forces as suspected Taliban or al-Qaeda fighters. Typically these captives were transferred to the special U.S. detention facility in Guantanamo... MORE

Memorial has published a report about a secret Interior Ministry prison in Grozny where, according to the human rights group, people were tortured and killed. According to the report, which was posted on Memorial's website (Memo.ru) on June 5, at the end May Memorial staffers... MORE

Kavkazky Uzel, citing the Chechen National Salvation Committee (ChKNS), reported on June 5 that 47 families of internally displaced Chechens were facing eviction from a temporary accommodation center, or PVR, on Ulitsa Derzhavina in Grozny on the orders of Khozhbaudi Estamirov, head of the Chechen... MORE

Several reputable observers - specifically, New York Times correspondent C. J. Chivers and Tanya Lokshina, chair of the Demos Center for Information and Human Rights Research in Moscow - have noted the construction boom that has taken place in Chechnya under the direction of Ramzan... MORE

Federal Security Service (FSB) Director Nikolai Patrushev accused "some countries" of a policy of "double standards" in the fight against international terrorism, and took the United States specifically to task over the fact that a Chechen rebel "ideologist," whom he called "Vychigaev," had been in... MORE

Early this year Chechen separatists began to discuss holding a major meeting among North Caucasian rebel commanders and underground Muslim religious leaders to transform the Caucasian insurgency into a unified political force. In an interview posted on the Kavkazcenter website on January 9, Chechen warlord... MORE

The violence in Ingushetia spiraled upward another notch on June 9, when gunmen fired on an SUV carrying Musa Nalgiev, the commander of the republic's OMON special police, killing him along with three of his children, a bodyguard, and a driver. Russian and Western news... MORE