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Human rights activists emphasize also that it is impossible to solve the problem of abductions, disappearances and tortures of arrested persons in Chechnya only by stopping the illegal actions of the ORB-2 agents.

Caucasian Knot has received an open letter from Dr. Aaron Roads, executive director of International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights. The letter is addressed to the law enforcement authorities in Chechnya; a copy was sent to Vladimir Ustinov, the Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation, and to Vladimir Lukin, Ombudsman of the Russian Federation. According to the letter, two persons were abducted on April 9, 2006 in Chechnya.

Dagestan law enforcement agencies have interrogated the US citizen Kelly McEvers three times this week. The employee of Washington John Hopkins University has come to Dagestan under a UNEADCO program, reports Radio "Liberty."

On March 30, 2006, Timirkhan Makhmadievich Shakhbulatov, born in 1966, was kidnapped by unknown armed persons wearing black clothes near his house in Grozny.

Manfred Nowak, special UN rapporteur on prevention of torture, has announced today that Moscow allows him to come to Russia and visit Chechnya, among other things. This is going to be the first trip of a UN representative who deals with the problems of torture, for more than a decade.

Boris Stomakhin, permanent author of the "Caucasus-centre" Chechen separatists' site, editor of the "Radikalnaya Politika" newspaper and co-chair of the Revolutionary Contact Association, arrested by militia in Moscow on March 21, is to be transferred from the special department of the city hospital No. 20 to the hospital department of the pre-trial prison "Matrosskaya Tishina." This has been reported to the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent by Regina Leonidovna, arrestee's mother.

The location and fate of the assistant of Aslan Maskhadov, president of ChRI killed in March 2005 in Chechnya, are still unknown.

Today, Madina Ezhieva, the wife of Arthur Ezhiev held on the territory of the Argun town military commandant's office, has filed a complaint to the Chechen Prosecutor's Office in which she detailed the circumstances of kidnapping of her husband.

Arthur (Yakub) Ezhiev, activist of the Russian-Chechen Friendship Society, kidnapped on March 15 from his house in the village of Serzhen-Yurt, Shali District of Chechnya by officers of Chechen power authorities, has been released today, reports Zharada Kharipova, the wife of Arthur's uncle Imran Ezhiev, citing their relatives in Chechnya, to the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent by telephone from Germany. According to her, no circumstances of his release are known, so far.

Arthur (Yakub) Ezhiev kidnapped on March 15 from his house in the village of Serzhen-Yurt, Shali District of Chechnya is being held on the territory of the military commandant's office (the so-called commandant's office No 8) in the town of Argun. He is held by Magomed Israpilov, commander of commandant's office company. He relayed a request to the relatives, through an intermediary, to hand him over a Stechkin pistol in return to the release of Arthur. The commandant's office is located in the same yard with the town prosecutor's office and the town department of internal affairs. The information is contained in the press-release of the Russian-Chechen information agency handed over to the "Caucasian Knot."

In the evening of March 7, 2006, officers of the local power authorities captured and took to an undisclosed location Islam Esinbayev, born in 1979, resident of the village of Prigorodnoye, Grozny District, Chechnya.

On March 9, ten unknown persons wearing camouflage and armed with automatic guns entered flat No 76 at Khmelnitski Street, 43 in Lenin District of the Chechen capital and took to an undisclosed location Borchashvili Mikhail Dzhaparovich, born in 1957. Nothing is known about his location now.

"What they have been fighting against in Chechnya - Shariat, drop out from the unified legal space, neglect of the Russian laws on the Republic's territory – everything which Dudaev was accused of, and also Maskhadov after the Khasavyurt agreement, now reigns in the republic under the patronage of Moscow," stated Lev Levinson, expert of the Institute of Human Rights, to the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent while commenting on the recent Ramzan Kadyrov's orders with regard to mandatory wearing of kerchiefs by women. "Even a child can understand that it runs counter to the Constitution or the Russian laws. He has no authority to issue this kind of instructions, orders, directions, etc. "

On March 14, 2006, the representative office of the Chechen Republic in the Republic of Ingushetia (RI) sent an address to the RI President M. Zyazikov, RI parliament speaker M. Sakalov and minister of internal affairs B. Khamkhoev, containing a request to take appropriate measures against illegal actions by law enforcement officers of the Republic of Ingushetia. This has been reported to the "Caucasian Knot" by the "Chechen Committee for National Salvation."

The "Caucasian Knot" has been handed over an open address to the ambassadors of G7 in the Russian federation about the situation threatening the life of political prisoner Mikhail Trepashkin. The document is signed by Liudmila Alekseeva, Chair of the Moscow Helsinki Group; Elena Bonner, human rights activist; Svetlana Gannushkina, "Civil Assistance" Committee; Lev Ponomaryov, movement "For Human Rights"; Yuri Samodurov, director of the Andrei Sakharov museum and public centre; Ernst Cherniy, secretary of the Public Committee to Protect Scholars; clergyman Gleb Yakunin, Committee for the Protection of Freedom of Conscience.