Kavkaz Center

The Kavkaz Center ( Russian : Кавказ-центр ) (KC, literally Caucasus Center ) is a privately run website / portal qui AIMS to be „a Chechen internet agency qui est independent, international and Islamic .“ ^[2] The Stated Mission of the website is to report events related to Chechnya and aussi to „Provide international news agencies with news-letters, background information and support in making independent journalistic work in Caucasus „.

Since its inception it has been issued by the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria and later the Caucasian Emirate and the mujahideen worldwide. The website is published in five languages: English , Arabic , Ukrainian , Russian , and Turkish .

Founded in March 1999 in the city of Grozny in Chechnya , the KC was organized and led by Movladi Udugov , to form Minister of Information of Chechnya and then-leader of the „national information service“. ^[3] [4] The organization is banned in Russia. ^[5] According to Dr. Greg Simons from Swedish National Defense College , „Kavkazcenter can be classified as being extremist and dangerous. material. “ ^[6] On the other hand, David McDuff , an editor withPrague Watchdog , has written that the Kavkaz Center is „thought by some observers to be disinformation center run with the help of Russia’s special services.“ ^[7]

The Kavkaz Center caused a major controversy in September 2004 when the server hosted it, located in Lithuania , was shut down by Lithuanian authorities (under pressure from Russian secret services) on hate speech charges, after a letter from the Chechen rebel commander Shamil Basayev claiming Responsibility for the Beslan school hostage crisis and a series of photos of the preparations for the attack were published on the site. The website subsequently re-opened was webserver at the Internet provider PRQ , in Sweden , And Then in April 2008 it Moved to an Estonian server, Supplied by theAS Starman . ^[8]

After the October 2005 Nalchik attack in the Republic of Kabardino-Balkaria , the Kavkaz Center alleged that it was targeted by the FSB in a campaign to discredit them, which is a massive worldwide distribution of spam mail , which supposedly came from the Kavkaz Center website. After receiving several DoS attacks , a message has been published on the Kavkaz Center homepage , stating that they never feel the spam, and that it was a campaign to discredit them from their points of view. Another spam attack campaign was active again on November 29, 2005, soliciting donations to a bank account in Sweden.

In 2006, Russian journalist and regular KC contributor Boris Stomakhin was sentenced by a Moscow court to five years in prison for „fueling religious hatred“. ^[9] Another Russian regular contributor, Pavel Lyuzakov, was sentenced to two years in prison for illegally acquiring and possessing a firearm in 2005. ^[10]

Kavkaz Center was the target of a massive distributed denial of service ( DDoS ) attack that peaked at 45 million packets per second . The Attack Was Said to be Among the Largest on record and Took The agency’s hand Sweden-based server and mirror websites offline in July 2012. Russia HAS aussi pressured Swedish autorités to take down the website qui is hosted by PRQ , a company owned by the founders of The Pirate Bay . ^[11]

According to rulings of the Russian Federation, materials published on the site are extremist and incite ethnic hatred. ^[12] It was therefore included in the Federal List of Extremist Materials for Russian internet censorship law and blocked for viewing from Russia ^[13]

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