World

Chechnya: Human Rights Activist Murdered Today

by sara star | July 15, 2009 at 08:01 am

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Natalya Estemirova, a young mother, widowed when her policeman husband was killed, has now been found dead today with two bullets to her head, in Ingushetia . She was known to investigate human rights issues in Chechnya.

Meanwhile, Ingushetia President was treated in Moscow, reported to be in a coma, after an assassination attempt earlier June 22, 2009.

After the recent assassination attempt against the president of Ingushetia, Yunus-bek Yevkurov, the question of whether Ramzan Kadyrov, the president of the Chechen republic, will be granted control over the neighboring Ingushetia has become a hot topic of debate. Yevkurov is now lying unconscious in the hospital and Kadyrov is proclaiming that President Dmitry Medvedev of Russia has given him a mandate to lead counter-insurgency operations in Ingushetia.

(Estemirova's) corpse, which showed signs of a violent death, was found at 5.20pm (1320 GMT) near Ingushetia's main city Nazran, ITAR-TASS news agency said, citing the regional interior ministry.

"The body had two wounds to the head, it was clear she had been murdered in the morning," Madina Khadziyeva, a spokeswoman at the ministry, told Reuters.

A prominent Russian activist who investigated abductions, killings and other rights abuses in Chechnya was found killed Wednesday, hours after being kidnapped in the Chechen capital, police officials and her organization said.

....Wednesday's killing comes as violence spirals in Russia's North Caucasus, with Ingushetia being particularly hard hit in recently.

....Estemirova was kidnapped earlier on Wednesday in the Chechen capital Grozny.

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.