Watchdog

A district court in Ufa, the capital of the Russian republic of Bashkortostan, has ruled that a blog on livejournal.com is extremist, RFE/RL's Tatar-Bashkir Service reports.

The blog, titled "Revinform News Agency -- True Information about Bashkortostan," is well-known for its adamant opposition to Bashkir President Murtaza Rakhimov.

Earlier this year the opposition website ufagub.com was also declared to be extremist by Bashkir authorities and was banned.

The owners of ufagub.com had to move their server from Russia to the United States in order to continue to running the site.

Leaders of the Kazakh opposition Azat party urged authorities to reopen the investigation into the 2006 murder of an opposition leader, RFE/RL's Kazakh Service reports.

The demand comes after the release of the book "Godfather-In-Law" by Rakhat Aliev, the fugitive former son-in-law of President Nursultan Nazarbaev.

The book reveals details of the controversial system of power built by Nazarbaev as leader of the country in the past 20 years.

Aliev, who has been living in self-imposed exile in Austria since 2007, states that opposition leader Altynbek Sarsenbaev and his two associates were killed by National Security Committee officers on a special order from Nazarbaev.

Azat party leader Bulat Abilov said in Almaty on June 2 that since the book reveals new details about the murder, the case should be reviewed.

Meanwhile, Sarsenbaev's brother, Rysbek, told journalists that he suspects Aliev of personal involvement in Sarsenbaev's killing.

He said that the popular weekly newspaper "Karavan" -- which was then owned and controlled by Aliev -- was the first to cover the developments around the murder as if it had inside information about the killing.