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Chechnya - The week in brief: 4 - 11 Feb 2008

February 4

Electronic gates were installed at the Chechen State University (ChGU) to monitor the flow of students and lecturers, Grozny-inform reported.

Aymani Kadyrova, mother of Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov and head of the Akhmad Kadyrov Foundation, was injured in a car accident near the village of Novogrozny.

Russian President Vladimir Putin visited military units that Russia deployed last year in the Dagestan village of Botlikh and Karachay-Cherkess village of Zelenchukskaya to secure its southern border. He also visited a Russian unit in Nalchik, the Kabardino-Balkarian capital.

February 5

The Chechen government's press service reported that deputies from the Chechen Republic elected in the December 2 parliamentary elections had been appointed deputy chairmen of various committees of Russia's State Duma.

A guerrilla was killed and an OMON policeman wounded in a shootout in a house in Dagestan's Derbentsky district.

February 6

Ramzan Lechkhadziyev, who headed the Chechen government's External Relations Department, was appointed head of the office of Premier Odes Baysultanov.

February 7

Russian lieutenant colonel Aleksey Korgun was given a three-year conditional sentence because of the March 24 2007 incident near the village of Urdyukhoy in Chechnya's Shatoysky district in which a spetsnaz group under his command opened fire by mistake on three Chechen women, one of whom later died.

Chechnya's population rose to 1.205 million in January 2007 from 1.183 million in the same period one year ago, according to preliminary figures released by the Chechen State Statistical Commitee and published by the press service of the Chechen government.

Two guerrillas were killed and one arrested in the village of Avadan in Dagestan's Derbentsky district, Russian media reported.

The OSCE's Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) as well as its Parliamentary Assembly said they would not deploy their planned observation missions to the March 2 presidential election in Russia due to restrictions imposed on them by Russian authorities.

February 8

A police patrol killed one of the three gunmen who attacked it in the village of Novy in the disputed Prigorodny district near the administrative border between North Ossetia and Ingushetia.

According to a report by the pro-guerrilla website Chechencenter which refers to a statement by Dishni Abdulmalik, the commander of guerrillas operating in Chechnya's Urus-Martanovsky district, Chechen guerrillas executed a Russian serviceman they took prisoner on January 30, allegedly in revenge for the killing of two Chechen women in Grozny.

Interfax reported that Russia's Federal Registration Service had begun an inspection in the Memorial Human Rights Center, which monitors human rights violations in the North Caucasus.

February 10

The documentary 'Letter to Anna - The Story of Journalist Politkovskaya's Death' ("Ein Artikel zu viel - Der Mord an Anna Politkowskaja") by Swiss director Eric Bergkraut premiered in Berlin.

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