Anna Politkovskaya was killed on 7 October 2006. Her articles, written from behind Chechnya’s blood-soaked information wall and barbed wire, became a voice of truth — the truth about what residents of the republic were experiencing as they became a convenient and powerless collective victim of the global “fight against international terrorism”.
Khasin Kabardaev, Arsen Aichepshev, Murat Kabardaev, Nazir Koshev and Murat Mulazhev will stand trial in the Karachay-Cherkessia Republic. According to investigators, they were part of a cell of the religious organization At-Takfir Wal-Hijra, which is banned in the Russian Federation. The defendants are accused of organizing the activities of an extremist association and participating in it.
At the beginning of the year, the Karachayevsky City Court sentenced another leader of the cell to 3 years and 2 months in prison. Another 12 people received sentences from 2 years to 3 years and 1 month.
Earlier, human rights activists noted that at present there is no convincing evidence confirming the existence of At-Takfir Wal-Hijra either in Russia or in other countries of the world. This is an Egyptian organization, the last mention of which was in the 1970s. According to historians, it has not existed in practice for a long time, but in the Russian Federation they believe the opposite.