Eurasia

Relatives of the more than 330 victims of the Beslan school siege have released a video that they say proves Russian security forces caused the massacre by firing grenades on the besieged building.

Even by Russian standards, the Litvinenko affair has been exceptionally murky. But, paradoxically, it has also been marked by a heightened sense of mirror-image symmetry. Either President Vladimir Putin is the villain or anti-Putin tycoon Boris Berezovsky is; Andrei Lugovoi was either the killer or himself a victim.

Ingush Mujahideen attacked a FSB building and the puppet “administration of the President” in the Ingushetia’s capital Magas last night, Russian sources reported.

For every Chechen male, the building of a house is part of his task in life, on a par with having a large family and raising children, so that he need not be ashamed of them in front of others. For many it is at the very least a lifetime’s work.

Immediately after yesterday’s announcement of the rulings by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg in two Chechnya-related cases, press conferences were held in the Russian and Chechen capitals by representatives of the Memorial Human Rights Centre, who gave their assessment of the event.

Alparslan Arslan, the radical Islamist who attacked Turkey’s top administrative court in May 2006, killing one judge and injuring four others, admitted during a court hearing Thursday (July 26th) that he had planned more assaults — including one on President Ahmet Necdet Sezer.

An Islamist radical on trial for a deadly raid last year on Turkey’s top administrative court said Thursday he also planned to assassinate the president and attack leading business groups, the Anatolia news agency reported.

Russia on Thursday said it had delayed the start-up of Iran’s first nuclear power station to early 2008 because Tehran had fallen behind with payments for the plant, Itar-Tass news agency reported.

The second largest opposition party in Turkey’s new parliament will take part in the upcoming presidential election, its leader said Thursday, boosting the governing party’s chances of seeing one of its own members as head of state.

Human rights activist Tatyana Lokshina, who has recently visited the occupied Chechnya, told to the “Caucasus Knot” journalists that more 300 young men joined Chechen Mujahideen.