Chechnya to celebrate anniversary of CTO cancellation

April 16 is one year from the date of cancellation of the counterterrorist operation (CTO) regime, which was introduced in the territory of the Chechen Republic back in 1999. This anniversary will be marked in the region as a national holiday.

The Chechen authorities find this cancellation to be one of the main achievements of 2009 and of the last decade as a whole. Therefore, the anniversary of this date will be marked in the republic by broad-scale actions, first of all, of religious character.

As reported by the spokesman of the Muftiat of Chechnya, on the day of the anniversary of CTO regime cancellation all the mosques of the Chechen Republic will hold large religious rites of Zikr and Movlid and sacrifices.

The CTO regime was introduced in the territory of Chechnya in autumn of 1999. It assumed a number of serious restrictions on the rights of civilians, including checks of passports and ban on movement in certain areas.

After cancellation of the CTO regime in Chechnya, President Ramzan Kadyrov proclaimed the day to be a national holiday.

However, statistics says that after cancellation of the CTO regime, the situation in Chechnya has not become calmer. Thus, after the cancellation the count of kidnappings and attacks on power agents went up, and quite a lot of terror acts were committed by terrorists-suicide-bombers.