BRIEFS

–SUPREME COURT OVERTURNS ACQUITAL OF RUSSIAN TROOPS

Russia’s Supreme Court on November 11 overturned the North Caucasus Military District Court’s June 29 acquittal of two officers of the Interior Ministry’s Internal Troops, Yevgeny Khudyakov and Sergei Arakcheyev, who were accused of murdering three civilians in Chechnya. According to Itar-Tass, the Supreme Court’s Military Board found that the jury for the trial had been convened improperly.

In the incident, which took place in January 2003, Khudyakov and Arakcheyev allegedly shot the three civilians after forcing them out of a KamAZ truck in Grozny’s Oktyabr district. The suspects then allegedly doused the victims’ bodies with gasoline and ignited them in attempt to cover up the crime, Lenta.ru reported on November 11.

–RUSSIAN WOMEN APPROVE OF SOLDIERS’ MOTHERS COMMITTEES

Moskovskie novosti reported on November 12 that a poll taken by the Levada Center among 1,000 women in large Russian cities at the end of October found that 72 percent of the respondents said the activities of the Soldiers’ Mothers Committees, which were formed in the late 1980s to protect Russian draftees from abuses by their own superiors, benefit the country. Five percent said their activities “fulfill a political order by the West to weaken Russia’s defense capabilities” while 9 percent said the committees’ activities neither help nor harm the country.