Oyub Titiyev (AP)
The house of Russian rights group Memorial’s Chechen head, Oyub Titiyev, is to be demolished along with thirty-six other houses to ‘make room for a shopping centre’, according to Memorial. Titiyev was arrested on 9 January on drugs charges. [Read more…]
Giorgi Giorganashvili (Facebook)
Tbilisi City Court sentenced actor Giorgi ‘Bakhala’ Giorganashvili to eight years in prison on 23 January on drug charges. Giorganashvili had claimed that police had planted the drugs on him. [Read more…]
Oyub Titiyev (ok.ru)
Chechen authorities have detained a local human rights activist on drug charges. Activists and government critics say the charges have been fabricated in order to silence him. [Read more…]
'Decriminalisation is inevitable', says a poster during a rally for softer drug policy (Luka Pertaia/Netgazeti)
Georgia’s highest court, the Constitutional Court, has ruled that it is unconstitutional to criminally prosecute people for consuming cannabis, effectively decriminalising its use. This is short of decriminalising the purchase, storage, or sale of cannabis, and is not legalisation. [Read more…]
Dare decriminalization (White Noise Movement)
Parliamentary hearings around Georgia’s drug decriminalisation bill, scheduled to take off on 28 November, have been postponed. The move has prompted anger amongst the authors of the bill and drug policy activists. [Read more…]
(Andrew Tabatadze)
Georgia, a country where every third prisoner is serving time for drugs, may be about to transform its strict drug policy into a far more liberal system. Activists and reformers are hoping that new legislation could change Georgia’s system away from what they call ‘the war against the people’. [Read more…]
Gyias Ibrahimov (Ulviyya Ali /Twitter)
The lawyer of Giyas Ibrahimov, an activist detained on drug-charges he claims are trumped-up, has appealed to Azerbaijan’s General Prosecutor's Office to investigate alleged torture of his client. [Read more…]
Mehman Galandarov (bastainfo.com)
Human rights activist Mehman Galandarov was found dead in Baku Detention Centre on 28 April; according to an official statement by the authorities, Galandarov committed suicide.
