Chechen leader vows to investigate activist murder

The chechen Human rights scene seems to be deteriorating. This Associated press report gives the details of the situation especially the case of Stanislav Markelov and reporter Anna Politkovskaya killings.

By MUSA SADULAYEV – 42 minutes ago

GROZNY, Russia — The Kremlin-installed leader of Chechnya has said he will personally oversee the investigation into the brazen murder of a top human rights activist — even though the victim's colleagues accuse Ramzan Kadyrov's security forces of involvement.

The United States and the European Union have condemned Wednesday's daylight shooting of Natalya Estermirova, a daring investigator of rights abuses in Russia's troubled North Caucasus. She worked with human rights lawyer Stanislav Markelov and reporter Anna Politkovskaya, also killed likely for their work.

The murder of Estemirova, whose body was found late Wednesday with bullet holes in the head roadside in the Ingushetia region, west of Chechnya, appeared to confirm that Russia remains a place where political murders are committed without fear of reprisal.

Her funeral was expected later Thursday in Grozny.

Colleagues of Estermirova accuse Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov of involvement in her murder. Estemirova investigated rights violations in his province.

But Kadyrov, in typically brash fashion, has vowed to bring the perpetrators of a murder he called "cynical" and "provocative" to justice.

His spokesman Alvi Kerimov told the AP on Thursday that Kadyrov has promised two investigations — one official and one "unofficial, according to Chechen traditions." It was unclear exactly what this meant, and there was no elaboration.

Kadyrov was also accused by some of involvement in Politkovskaya's slaying in 2006, but Kadyrov reportedly replied "I don't kill women."

Estemirova in 2007 was the first recipient of an Anna Politkovskaya memorial award, given by the Reach All Women in War charity, and received other European awards for her work.

She had collected evidence of rights abuses in Chechnya since 1999, when the second separatist war began in the province after the Soviet collapse of 1991. She was a key researcher for a recent Human Rights Watch report that accused Chechen authorities of burning more than two dozen houses in the past year to punish relatives of alleged rebels.

Estemirova, a 50-year-old single mother, was kidnapped Wednesday morning, according to the prominent rights organization she worked for, Memorial. Chairman Oleg Orlov said that four men forced her into a car in the Chechen capital, Grozny, where she lived. He said witnesses heard her yell that she was being abducted.

About nine hours later, her body was found.

Russian news agencies on Thursday quoted a spokesman for federal investigators as saying the working theory was that Estemirova's field of work was the killers' motive.

Russia's mountainous southern fringe is beset by increasingly frequent shootings and kidnappings linked to Islamist insurgents, criminal elements and ethnic feuds. Some of the violence is a lingering insurgency after two bloody wars in the last two years devastated Chechnya.

In the Kabardino-Balkaria province one policeman was killed and another injured in a drive-by shooting early Thursday, and Russian news agencies reported the slaying of the head of a village in nearby Dagestan.