Free Republic

Moscow (AsiaNews / Agencies) – The Russian Islamic University, inaugurated in Grozny, on August 21 is called Kunta-Haji, in honor the Sufi mystic who in the mid nineteenth century preached non-violence in Chechnya. The ceremony was opened by a video message in which Vladimir Putin, the Russian premier said: "There are three million Muslims in our country and they all consider Russia as their home, their mother country and we welcome the recovery Islamic traditions". The words of the Prime Minister in Moscow echoed those of Ramzan Kadyrov, Chechnya's president, who announced a future for the country without the influence...

Prominent Russian human rights activist Natalya Estemirova was abducted outside her home in the Chechen capital, Grozny, last month. Hours later, her body was discovered in a forest in the neighboring region of Ingushetia. Estemirova, who'd investigated abductions, torture and other rights abuses in Chechnya, had been shot in the head. Estemirova's colleagues blame Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov. They accuse him of fostering an atmosphere of impunity in which the abductions and killings of his critics take place. But in an exclusive interview with RFE/RL, Kadyrov denies the accusations. He says his only concern is the welfare of Chechnya's residents,...

The abduction and murder of human rights activist Natalia Estemirova in the conflict-ridden Northern Caucasus has been the latest crime to shake Russia's embattled liberal community - and raise the question of whether today's Russia lives not just under an authoritarian regime, but a reign of terror against dissenters. While there are different theories as to the real perpetrators of this vile crime, none are particularly flattering to the Kremlin. On July 15, 50-year-old Estemirova, a teacher, journalist, and single mother of a 15-year-old daughter, was abducted outside her home in Grozny, the capital of Chechnya. Later that day, she...

One of the last acts of Natalia Estemirova, the human rights activist who was abducted and found murdered on Wednesday in Ingushetia, was to document the killing of a Chechen villager shot for allegedly giving a sheep to rebels. These two murders add to a fresh surge of violence across RussiaÂ’s north Caucasus, which is setting off a powder keg of Islamic extremism, top-level vested interest, interclan rivalry, traditions of vengeance and ingrained suspicion of the behaviour of human rights activists. The stability of the region is deteriorating, nearly a year after Russia attacked Georgia over the breakaway republics of...

MOSCOW (AFP) – Chechnya leader Ramzan Kadyrov is suing the head of a Russian rights group after he accused the Caucasus strongman over the murder of activist Natalya Estemirova, his lawyer said Friday. .... He emphasized that the complaint would target Orlov personally. Estemirova, 50, was found dead Wednesday afternoon with gunshot wounds to the head and chest hours after she was seen being bundled into a car outside her home in the Chechen capital Grozny that same morning. .... Kadyrov had earlier personally telephoned Orlov to bluntly rebuke him for his allegations "You are not a prosecutor or a...

Colleagues of Ms. Estemirova say her murder Wednesday is part of a pattern that shows cost of a Kremlin pact with Chechnyan President Ramzan Kadyrov. Moscow - The murder of human rights activist Natalya Estemirova, kidnapped in Chechnya and shot execution-style in neighboring Ingushetia on Wednesday, has shocked the Kremlin and led President Dmitry Medvedev to pledge a full investigation. But leaders of Memorial, the Russian human rights organization that Ms. Estemirova worked with, and other human rights experts here say her death can be added to a fast-growing price tag for a Faustian pact. They say that pro-Moscow strongman...

Abducted and murdered on Wednesday, hours after her organisation backed calls for Vladimir Putin to face trial over atrocities in Chechnya. Natalya Estemirova, who won numerous international awards for her work, was bundled into a car as she left her home in Grozny, the Chechen capital. Her body was later found by the side of a road in the neighbouring province of Ingushetia. She had been shot twice in the head at close range. Mrs Estemirova, a single mother in her early 40s, was the seventh opponent of Ramzan Kadyrov, the Kremlin-backed Chechen president, to have been murdered in the...

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s visit to the Georgian breakaway region of South Ossetia has not contributed to promoting stability following last year’s brief war, the US State Department said Tuesday. Medvedev made the controversial trip to South Ossetia Monday and offered financial and military support in defiance of the West and the Georgian government. “Certainly I don’t think that it was any kind of step forward in terms of establishing stability in the region,” US State Department spokesman Ian Kelly told reporters. The situation in Georgia over the separatist regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia has been a source of...

MOSCOW - Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov said he had been ordered by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to fight insurgents in the neighboring region of Ingushetia after its leader was gravely wounded in a bomb attack. Kadyrov's harsh tactics have brought relative stability to Chechnya since he was elected in 2007 after more than a decade of war. But fellow Kremlin appointees have failed to stem spikes in violence in neighboring Dagestan and Ingushetia. With Ingush President Yunus-Bek Yevkurov fighting for his life in hospital, Kadyrov said he had been ordered by Medvedev to run cross-border operations. "He told me to...

NAZRAN, Russia -- Gunmen killed a former top government minister in Ingushetia as he stood outside his home in the violent southern Russian region Saturday, law enforcement officials said. .... Two gunmen sprayed Aushev with automatic weapon fire as he got out of his car at the gate outside his home in the region's main city, Nazran, around 6:30 p.m. (1430 GMT), the regional Interior Ministry's press service said. He died en route to the hospital. Aushev was vice premier under former Ingush President Murat Zyazikov, a KGB agent who was widely reviled by many Ingush for his repressive policies....

MOSCOW, April 7 (RIA Novosti) - Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov has said that the North Caucasus republic owes its very existence to the efforts of Russian Prime Minster Vladimir Putin. "If it were not for Putin, Chechnya would not exist," the 32-year-old Chechen leader said in an interview published on Tuesday in the Rossiiskaya Gazeta government daily. "He saved our people with his strong-willed decisions," Kadyrov said. "I know this history - I personally participated in it. If it were not for Putin, we would not be here." Both Kadyrov and his late father, the republic's first president, sided with...

The Russian authorities have confirmed a prominent opponent of the pro-Kremlin Chechen President, Ramzan Kadyrov, was shot dead in Dubai on Saturday. Diplomats said Sulim Yamadayev's body had been identified by his relatives. Mr Yamadayev fell out with Mr Kadyrov last year and was sacked as commander of an elite security forces battalion.

Vladimir Putin, the Russian prime minister, is facing fresh international scrutiny after a powerful Chechen warlord who fell out with the Kremlin was assassinated in Dubai. The murder of Sulim Yamadayev could trigger renewed violence in Chechnya and will cause alarm outside Russia after a series of similar assassinations in Istanbul and Vienna. Mr Yamadayev, the leading rival of Chechnya's Kremlin-backed president, Ramzan Kadyrov, was shot dead in the car park of a housing development in Dubai where he had been living under a false name since December. While there were contradictory details about the killing, experts on Chechnya alleged...

MOSCOW (AFP)--Russia is considering ending the decade-long effective state of war in Chechnya, an official said Thursday, in a move that could see the withdrawal of thousands of troops from the once restive republic. The decree on the start of a "counter-terrorist operation" was passed in Chechnya under late president Boris Yeltsin in 1999 just months before he resigned and installed Vladimir Putin at the helm. "Such an issue is being worked out but it's too early to talk about the time frame," a Kremlin official told AFP. The official's remarks came in response to a surprise announcement by Ramzan...

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin held a tense meeting with Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov on Friday, trading thinly veiled barbs about whose responsibility it was to rebuild the impoverished republic. While the government aims to cut the budget for regional subsidies this year, Kadyrov has been pressing for more federal support. President Dmitry Medvedev said in February that regional leaders who were not meeting expectations on handling the crisis would be called to Moscow for meetings. Putin opened the meeting by asking whether Kadyrov's "discussion with the Finance Ministry was finished," without elaborating. "Everything is great with the Finance Ministry now,"...

One week ago I posted about how the Russian government has allowed Islamic rule in Chechnya. Since then six Russian officers were killed in a bomb attack and now Chechnya leader Ramzan Kadyrov in an effort to strengthen Islam is offering a cash reward to anyone who has a baby on Mohammad's birthday and names him Mohammad.

Kavkaz TV, the video arm of Kavkaz-Center, the radical Islamist Chechen rebel website, this past week posted a video clip in which a young Chechen man, Ruslan Khalidov, claimed that Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov employed him to kill Magomed Ocherhadji, a leader of the large Chechen exile community in Norway. As Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) reported on March 5, Khalidov said in the video that he did not carry out the killing but that he had been tortured and threatened in an attempt to force him to comply. “They even did things that I’m ashamed to talk about,” he...

The bullnecked president of Chechnya emerged from afternoon prayers at the mosque and with chilling composure explained why seven young women who had been shot in the head deserved to die. Ramzan Kadyrov said the women, whose bodies were found dumped by the roadside, had "loose morals" and were rightfully shot by male relatives in honor killings. "If a woman runs around and if a man runs around with her, both of them are killed," Kadyrov told journalists in the capital of this Russian republic...

Analysts say Islamist extremists have infiltrated the region and that worsening poverty may drive people towards the rebels who have previously sent kidnappers and suicide bombers to attack Russian cities. Financial support is a tool for the Kremlin to dampen support for the rebels but Russia's cash reserves have shrunk by some 40 percent to about $385 billion (270 billion pounds) since last summer. In Russia's original budget for 2009, Chechnya's government said it had been promised around 24.5 billion roubles (474 million pounds) -- worth about $1 billion before the currency devalued by about a third. The other North...

At the entrance to Chechnya’s State University in the capital of Grozny, a gaggle of female students can usually be seen fiddling with a newly mandatory item of clothing: headscarves. Students who do not arrive with a scarf – perhaps half – stand outside under the gaze of the security guards and, using an elaborate array of hairpins, put theirs on. Many girls are the first in three generations to cover their heads, and it does not come naturally to some. The Soviet Union even encouraged women to burn their headscarves, to discourage its officially atheist youth from falling under...