Week in the Caucasus: review of main events of May 3-9

First resettlers from Imereti Lowland celebrate their housewarming parties in Nekrasovskoe village; Ingush mothers state power agents' arbitrariness towards their sons; in Azerbaijan the Kura River overflows its banks and floods houses; Georgian oppositionists suffer in fight with policemen, - look up these and other events in the review of the week of May 3-9, 2010, in the Caucasian regions prepared by the "Caucasian Knot".

Resettlers from Imereti Lowland move to Nekrasovskoe

On May 4, in the Krasnodar Territory, four families from the Imereti Lowland of Sochi celebrated their housewarming parties in new cottages in Nekrasovskoe village. Their houses got under the alienation procedure for construction of Olympic objects. The first was the Stolnikov family.

At the same time other Imereti residents were surprised when learnt that their resettlement into new houses in Nekrasovskoe is postponed or even cancelled. Thus, Irina Omelchenko unexpectedly learnt that the house, which was intended for her family, would be given to other people. Other Imereti residents found themselves in a similar situation.

The State Corporation (SC) "Olympstroy" explained the situation by the so-called "minimization process": certain houses in the Imereti Lowland, contrary to earlier made decisions, will not be alienated and demolished. According to officials from the SC, it was done under the request of Imereti residents themselves.

According to their words, Irina Omelchenko and her neighbours did not receive any warnings of this sort. Therefore today about 50 families are in uncertainty: either their old house are demolished and they move into new ones, or they stay to live in their old houses.

Residents of Ingushetia complain of power agents' arbitrariness

In Kantyshevo village, Nazran District of Ingushetia, on May 6, Zelimkhan Oziev, 23, a programmer of the "Idea" Advertising Agency, was shot dead by power agents right in the yard of his own house. As Tamara Ozieva, Zelimkhan's mother, told the "Caucasian Knot", over 100 fighters from law enforcement bodies, who arrived in armoured troop carriers and Gazel vans, surrounded the Ozievs' household and enticed its residents out of the house by calling from their neighbours' telephone. The younger son Zelimkhan went out into the yard and was shot dead by power agents without any warning.

Tamara Ozieva asserts that after her son's murder power agents purposefully destroyed their house by shelling it from grenade launchers and automatic firearms.

The Russian FSB asserts that the assassinated Zelimkhan Oziev was a militant. Zelimkhan's relative deny it and state that it was extrajudicial execution.

Zelimkhan Chitigov, 20, an earlier kidnapped resident of Ingushetia, was found by his relatives in the building of the OVD (Interior Division) for Karabulak severely beaten. Last week the "Caucasian Knot" was informed about it by his mother Zukhra Chitigova. According to her story, now Zelimkhan is in grave condition at the Republic's Clinical Hospital of Ingushetia, in a special isolation ward for detainees under the guard.

In Georgia, opposition fights with police

On May 6, in the centre of Tbilisi, clashes burst out between activists of the opposition and special-purpose troops. From of old, Georgia has been celebrating May 6 as the St George Day - the day of the country's patron. This year, the authorities of Georgia made a decision to announce May 6 also to be the Police Day. The opposition promised to hold protest actions.

When oppositionists blocked a railroad line and tried to break to the MIA building, the police tried to stop the action; as a result, about 10 oppositionists suffered. Among the victims were the leaders of the opposition Levan Gachechiladze and Bidzina Gegidze. The latter was hospitalized with injured head. The people in civilian clothes from the side of police cordon also poured paint over oppositionists.

Oppositionists assert that their action was peaceful; their MIA counterparts insist that the protesters were first to throw stones on policemen.

Azerbaijan suffered from flooding

In Azerbaijan, heavy rains forced the Kura River out of its banks, and it broke through protective dams in a number of regions. Flooded zones formed in the territory of 40 districts, about 20,000 houses were covered with water, over 300 houses collapsed and 2000 more are in emergency condition. Besides, water flooded 50,000 hectares of arable land and pastures.

The floods forced to start evacuation of nine villages of the Sabirabad District. Here, water flooded gasoline and gas fuelling stations and tubs with fuel; the bridge over the Baku-Goradiz railroad line was under threat of collapsing.

According to local authorities, Azerbaijan faced this scale of calamity for the first time in history; however, the situation is under control.

May 9 holiday in NCFD was marked by explosions

The celebrations of the 65th anniversary of the Victory in the Great Patriotic War in the North-Caucasian Federal District (NCFD) of Russia were accompanied by explosions in Dagestan and Kabardino-Balkaria and an attempt of terror act by a suicide bomber in Chechnya.

In Dagestan, on May 9 two explosions were triggered - both in Kaspiisk. At 7:00 a.m. Moscow time a frontier service guard, who was on engineering patrol, blew him up on a self-made bomb; and at 9:00 p.m. Moscow time a car blew up on the move at some 100 meters from the check point of the marine infantry brigade. The driver - a marine infantryman, who was on his way to his military unit, - was killed.

In the Grozny District of Chechnya on the Victory Day law enforcers liquidated, according to their data, a militant-suicide bomber, who tried to trigger the bomb fixed to his body.

In the central street of the city of Nalchik, the capital of Kabardino-Balkaria, in the morning on May 9 an explosion happened in a shop at No. 24 Lenin Avenue.