Thursday July 16, 2009

Chechnya activist's murder sparks international outrage

By Aydar Buribayev and Amie Ferris-Rotman

MOSCOW (Reuters) - The abduction and murder of a prominent human rights activist from Chechnya sparked international outrage on Thursday and her grieving supporters asked "Who is next?".

While relatives and friends returned Natalia Estimirova's body from neighbouring Ingushetia where it had been dumped in woodland, German Chancellor Angela Merkel urged Russia to clarify the circumstances surrounding her killing.

"I expressed my shock at the death," Merkel said after meeting Russian President Dimitry Medvedev in Germany.

Medvedev called it "a very sad event" and said he was determined to find and punish Estimirova's killers.

The human rights organisation she worked for blamed Chechnya's Kremlin-backed president for her killing and Amnesty International said it stemmed from a culture of impunity both within Chechnya and in Russia as a whole. The United States called it an "outrageous crime".

A close friend of murdered Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, Estimirova worked for the human rights organisation Memorial in the Chechen capital Grozny and documented abuses by law enforcement agencies.

She was abducted on Wednesday in Chechnya and her body was found in neighbouring Russian republic Ingushetia in the latest of a series of killings of establishment critics which has led to questions about Medvedev's pledges to uphold the rule of law.

Russia's Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev told reporters in Munich the government was pursuing several scenarios, while prosecutor General Yury Chaika was shown on Russian television saying he would take personal control of the case.

Memorial's chairman Oleg Orlov explicitly blamed Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov, an ex-rebel turned Kremlin loyalist.

"I know, I am sure of it, who is guilty for the murder of Natalia... His name is Ramzan Kadyrov," he said in a statement on Memorial's website www.memo.ru late on Wednesday.

"Ramzan already threatened Natalia, insulted her, considered her a personal enemy."

Kadyrov's spokesman said her killers would be punished.

"Estemirova defended human rights. She couldn't possibly have had enemies amongst clear-thinking people," he said. "Those who took her life do not deserve to be called people. They deserve no mercy and they should be punished as the cruelest of criminals".

BURIAL THIS WEEK

Estemirova's body arrived in Grozny from Ingushetia on Thursday with a cortege of cars packed with colleagues and relatives. Relatives will decide whether to bury her on Thursday or Friday, said Shakhman Akbulatov, the head of Memorial's Grozny office.

Russian state-controlled Vesti TV showed sobbing supporters touching photographs of her near the Memorial office in Grozny. A man in black held up a sign saying "Who is next?"

Her body was found with two wounds to the head and the Ingush Interior Ministry said it was clear she had been murdered on Wednesday morning. Rights groups said she had been shot.

Estemirova was a single mother aged about 50, friends said, and leaves a 15-year-old daughter. She was snatched as she left her house, and cried out she was being kidnapped as she was forced into a white vehicle and driven away, groups said.

"Natalia Estemirova's murder is a consequence of the impunity that has been allowed to persist by the Russian and Chechen authorities," said Irene Khan, Secretary General of Amnesty International.

The United States condemned her killing.

"We call upon the Russian government to bring to justice those responsible for this outrageous crime and demonstrate that lawlessness and impunity will not be tolerated," White House National Security Council spokesman Mike Hammer said.

Described by leading newspaper Kommersant on Thursday as "the best known rights activist in the North Caucasus", Estemirova was the inaugural recipient in 2007 of the Anna Politkovskaya Award given by the charity Reach All Women in War.

Politkovskaya was gunned down in her Moscow apartment building in 2006. Nobody has been convicted of her murder.

Separatists in mainly Muslim Chechnya fought two wars against Moscow in the 1990s. With the nearby republics of Ingushetia and Dagestan, it still faces a simmering Islamist insurgency.

Human rights groups have repeatedly accused the authorities of serious abuses including house burning, extra-judicial killings, torture and illegal punishment.

Analysts say growing violence in Russia's mainly Muslim southern flank has highlighted the danger of the Kremlin's policy of handing control to local elites to try to stem unrest.

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