Watchdog

Human rights watchdogs have slammed authorities in Russia's Chechen Republic for sentencing a former Chechen politician, Ruslan Kutayev, to four years in jail.

Kutayev was found guilty of illegal drugs possession and sentenced on July 7.

He was arrested in February, two days after holding an event marking the 70th anniversary of the Chechen deportation to Kazakhstan.

Kutayev is the leader of the Assembly of Peoples of the Caucasus, a nongovernmental organization aiming to unite ethnic groups across the North Caucasus.

The Moscow-based Memorial human rights center has designated Kutayev as a political prisoner on the grounds that the charge against him was fabricated.

In a statement issued on July 7, the president of Freedom House, David J.Kramer, called Kutayev’s sentence "a political retribution."

Kramer urged Chechen authorities to immediately release Kutayev.

The European Court of Human Rights has condemned Russia for the mass deportation of Georgian citizens in 2006.

The Strasbourg-based court ruled on July 3 that the expulsions had been "arbitrary" and violated the European Convention on Human Rights.

It upheld Georgia's claims that Russian authorities had implemented "a coordinated policy of arresting, detaining, and expelling Georgian nationals" living in Russia.

The Georgian goverment said more than 4,600 expulsion orders were issued by Russia from September 2006 to January 2007 and that more than 2,300 were detained and forcibly expelled.

The controversial expulsion campaign came two years before Russia and Georgia fought a brief war over Georgia's pro-Russian breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

With reporting by AFP