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May 7, 2006
Sweden: Chechen Islamist Site Taken Offline
Occasionally we have drawn material from the website kavkazcenter.com when quoting from the Islamists behind the Chechen conflict, such as Abdul-Khalim Sadulaev. Now, if one clicks on the site link, the following message is found: "KavkazCenter.com is temporarily out of order as the Swedish police has executed a search warrant and confiscated the servers. Until it's up on new hardware please visit www.kavkazcenter.net." The message is followed by a block of text in Russian.
The details are given in Sweden's The Local. The website was hosted on servers which were owned by a Finnish businessman. He moved the site to Swedish host servers, after complaints from the Finnish and Russian authorities in 2004.
On Friday, the web host was called by the international prosecutor's office in Sweden. The owner said: "They came to the office and held a short meeting about our relationship to the client. Someone from the National Criminal Investigation Department also took part."
"The prosecutor then decided to search the premises and to confiscate two servers. I see this as an outrage. I don't agree with what's written on the website but I respect their right to free speech", he stated.
The Russian Embassy had apparently initiated a complaint to the prosecutor's office. The company owner said the website of KavkazCenter is accused of incitement. He explained: "The material in question is a number of pages in the site's letters pages in which an attack in Nalchik in October 2005 is praised."
However a mirror site, KavkazCenter.net, is still up and running in Lithuania, and its content is identical to the original. In a recent case, this site was discussed in the Lithuanian supreme court, where it was decided that the site could remain, despite Russian protestations.
Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at May 7, 2006 7:20 PM
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