Russian rights activist kidnapped and murdered
A leading Russian activist who investigated abductions and killings in Chechnya was murdered today hours after being kidnapped.
Natalya Estemirova’s body was found in Ingushetia, which borders Chechnya to the west, Memorial, her rights group, said.
Ms Estemirova’s corpse was discovered with two close-range bullet wounds in her head not far from the region’s main city, Nazran.
Four men forced her into a car in the Chechen capital, Grozny, earlier today. Witnesses heard her yell that she was being abducted.
Ms Estemirova, a single mother in her early 40s, had collected evidence of human rights abuses in Chechnya since the start of the second war there in 1999.
She also worked with the investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya, another critic of Russia’s war against separatists in the Caucasus. She was gunned down in her Moscow apartment building in 2006.
Ms Estemirova also worked with Stanislav Markelov, a prominent lawyer and opponent of rights abuses in Chechnya, who was shot and killed on a Moscow street in January.
Her death came as violence spiralled in Russia’s North Caucasus, with Ingushetia being particularly hard hit in recent months.
