On the 15th of July 2009, a well-known human rights activist was brutally abducted and murdered in Chechnya, in Russia’s northern Caucasus region. Natalya Estemirova was a key source of information on the human rights situation in the republic. Her murder was a clear reminder of the grave dangers facing human rights groups working in the area.

BY Geert Groot Koerkamp

When Natalya Estemirova did not show up at a scheduled meeting on the 15th of July last year, her colleagues in the Russian human rights organisation Memorial knew something was terribly wrong. Close to her home in the Chechen capital Grozny a woman described to them how Estemirova was abducted by several men, and driven away in a white Russian Zhiguly. Later that same day her bullet-ridden body was found near a road in the neighbouring republic of Ingushetia.

The brutal killing of one of Russia’s best known human rights campaigners sent shockwaves through Russia’s human rights community. Memorial temporarily halted its activities in Chechnya. Its chairman, Oleg Orlov, accused Chechen president Ramzan Kadyrov of carrying responsibility for the murder. Kadyrov, in turn, went to court, accusing Orlov of slander, and won. A criminal investigation against Orlov on the same charges is continuing.

Kadyrov’s direct involvement in the killing has not been proved. One year after the killing, the perpetrators have not been brought to justice. Instead, the investigation has come up with a rather ‘convenient’ version of events, involving an alleged murderer who is already dead. A certain Alkhazur Bashayev is said to have killed Estemirova, because she allegedly had written about Islamic rebels from the Chechen village of Shalazhi, among them Bashayev.

The investigators even quoted alleged witnesses, who said Estemirova visited the village at the end of April, 2009. According to her colleagues, however, Estemirova has never been in the village and never published anything on it, so such a motive for the alleged killer simply did not exist. The ‘guilt’ of Bashayev was also based on a gun found in Shalazhi and said to be the murder weapon. Bashayev himself was killed in a shoot-out late last year.

“It is very convenient to put forward someone who is guilty,’’ says Memorial’s Aleksandr Cherkasov. ,,And so much the better when this person cannot say anything in defence.’’ In Russia, he adds, such things happen far too often.

According to another human rights campaigner, Svetlana Gannushkina, who is a member of the presidential council for human rights, the people involved in the investigation do not really believe this official version of events, which is, nonetheless, “very convenient for someone.”

She and other colleagues of Estemirova stress the need to closely investigate several highly sensitive cases Estemirova had been working on just prior to her death. These involve the public killing of a man a Chechen village. Rizvan Albekov and his son Aziz had been stopped on the road by local police, accused of having provided food to Islamic rebels. Around midnight that day Rizvan was shot in the centre of Akkinchu-Borzoi. The men who killed him said this would happen to anyone who would help the rebels.

In an interview two days later Natalya Estemirova said that Chechnya was in the grip of a new wave of violence, and she also provided the names of the people who she thought were responsible for Albekov’s murder. Within a week she was dead.

One year later, Memorial is once again considering to halt its activities in the region. This time the reason is a recent interview by Chechen president Ramzan Kadyrov to Chechen television, in which he equates human rights activists with ‘enemies of the state.’ “They receive large salaries from the West,’’ he said. “In return they write all kinds of nasty things on the internet. Therefore they are not my opponents, they are enemies of the people, enemies, of the law, enemies of the state.’’

Memorial chairman Oleg Orlov hopes the words of the Chechen president will prompt western leaders to ask Russian president Dmitry Medvedev ‘serious, unpleasant questions’ about this, and also the investigation of the Estemirova murder case. In response to the criticism, Kadyrov has denied that human rights groups are under threat in Chechnya. Orlov has welcomed Kadyrov’s words and, while expressing surprise at Kadyrov’s sudden change of mind, says Memorial “is always ready for dialogue.”