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Chechnya - The week in brief: 30 Apr - 06 May 2007

May 1 - About 20,000 people took part in the official May Day celebrations in Grozny.

May 1 - Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov opened a rebuilt cottage village in Grozny's Staropromyslovsky district for large and needy families who were previously living in temporary accommodation centres in the republic's capital. The village, which was initially called "Ramzan" and eventually given the name "Vozrozhdenie" (Revival), consists of 85 houses.

May 2 - The pro-guerrilla website Kavkaz-center announced that Amir Muslim, a native of the village of Shelkovskaya, was in recent days appointed as the new commander of the north-eastern front of the armed forces of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria. He replaced Amir Takhir (Batayev), who was killed during a shoot-out with federal forces in Gudermes on March 21, 2007.

May 2- North Ossetia's Supreme Court effectively ruled against possible prosecution of officials in charge of the hostage rescue operation during the Beslan school siege in early September 2004 by uphelding a protest filed by the General Prosecutor's Office against a lower court's verdict.

May 3 - Anna Politkovskaya, the late Russian journalist, was posthumously awarded the 2007 UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize in Medellin, Colombia.

May 3 - Speaking on the occasion of World Press Freedom Day, Terry Davis, Secretary General of the Council of Europe said that "Seven months after Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya was brutally murdered on the doorstep of her apartment in Moscow, we still do not know who killed her and who ordered her killing."

May 3 - Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov issued a decress confirming the composition of the Presidential Commission for the Rehabilitation of Victims of Political Repression.

May 3 - First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov told reporters in Bryansk that Russia will stick to its moratorium on the Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) until it is ratified by other signatories, and will no longer inform anyone about troop movements on Russian territory.

May 4 - Members of Babel Caucase Caravan, which left France on April 15, 2007 to organize cultural and social events in the Caucasus and make a stop in Grozny, announced that Russian authorities declared their activities throughout the Russian Federation "impossible".

May 4 - The Chechen authorities called for the closure of the ill-famed law enforcement branch known as ORB-2 and its detention centers on the republic's territory.

May 6 - Three interior ministry officers and three guerrillas were killed in a shootout in the village of Khattuni in Chechnya's Vedensky district.

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