The American Committee for Peace in the Caucasus

ACPC Weekly News UPDATE
September 21, 2009 – September 27, 2009

A day in court: Kadyrov vs. Orlov case begins in Moscow
Hearing in a libel case brought against a prominent human rights activist by Chechen president Ramzan Kadyrov began in a Moscow court this week. Kadyrov is seeking 10m rubles ($330,000) in damages from Oleg Orlov, director of Human Rights Center Memorial, who accused the president of Chechnya of being responsible for the kidnapping and murder of Natalya Estemirova, a leading researcher with Memorial in Chechnya, on July 15, 2009. Estemirova exposed numerous violations by members of Kadyrov’s private militia in Chechnya. She was kidnapped outside her apartment in Grozny and was later found dead with bullet wounds to head and chest in neighboring Ingushetia.

Referring to his earlier statement about Kadyrov, Orlov stated “I didn’t speak of his involvement, I spoke of his guilt. These are two different things.” Kadyrov’s lawyer, who didn’t call any witnesses, said after the hearing that human rights activists are “miserable people.”

Kadryov stated in an interview with

Zavtra earlier this week that “Memorial is an organization invented for Russia’s destruction” and referring to its employees added that he finds it “repugnant to speak with such people.” He did not attend the hearing.
Related articles:

· Chechnya president sues human rights activist over murder claim
Guardian, September 26, 2009

· Transcript of Oleg Orlov’s defamation case statements
Human Rights Center Memorial, September 26, 2009 (in Russian)

· Caucasus – Russia’s strategic frontline (interview with Ramzan Kadyrov)
Zavtra, September 23, 2009 (in Russian)

Dagestan marks 10 year anniversary of rebel attack amid rising militant threat
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, for whom the incursion by militants into Dagestan 10 years ago and the subsequent military campaign in Chechnya served as a political launch pad into a two-term presidency, visited the increasingly violent republic to mark the anniversary this week. He met with veterans and the republic’s President Mukhu Aliyev, and commended the Dagestani people for standing up to “defend their republic and territorial integrity” from “well-armed gangs of international terrorists.”

Security in Dagestan, the North Caucasus’s biggest and most ethnically diverse republic, has deteriorated significantly in recent years as a well armed and resilient home-grown militant underground has waged a deadly campaign against local and federal security services.

In the wake of Putin’s visit to the republic, gunmen killed a deputy chief of the Interior Ministry’s criminal investigation department along with his nephew, and in a separate gun battle three militants and one policeman were killed in the republic’s capital, Makhachkala.

Over the weekend, gunmen also killed the acting head of the republic’s Khasavyurt region. Alim-Sultan Alkhamatov, who had survived three previous attempts on his life, was shot dead in southwest Moscow on Sunday in his car.