Russian Activist Found Dead after Kidnap

Natalya Estemirova, Who Investigated Human Rights Abuses, Was Abducted in Chechnya

(AP)  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.

Natalya Estemirova's body was found in Ingushetia, which borders Chechnya to the west, Oleg Orlov, the chairman of Memorial, her rights group, told The Associated Press.

Estemirova's corpse was discovered with two close-range bullet wounds in her head not far from the region's main city, Nazran, said Ingush Interior Ministry spokeswoman Madina Khadziyeva.

Earlier, Orlov told the AP that four men forced Estemirova into a car in the Chechen capital, Grozny, on Wednesday. He said witnesses heard her yell that she was being abducted.

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.

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.

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

[Benton09]

TheMasses0007, better a fool than a Nazi like you.

[Benton09]

This might have been one of Cheney's secret plans to deal with that liberal media. (FOXed UP) News would be exempt of course.

[jackp32]

Russia knows how to take care of those activists. "When they came for me and I yelled out for help, there was no one left to help me."

[rrozsa]

That is business-as-usual in a country which has no first-amendment rights, which we enjoy in the US. Makes me really appreciate my freedoms even more. We tend to take for granted the right we have to speak out against the government. My husband grew up in a communist country where you could be taken away and sentenced to hard labor for the rest of your life, with no trial, just on a rumor that you were heard telling a political joke, or if the Securitate knocked on the door, felt your radio to see if it was warm, and checked to see which station you were listening to. Listening to Radio Free America? Another instant sentence of hard labor. If you were ever lucky enough to be returned to your family, you would be likely missing a leg or suffering from some terrible disease due to the terrible conditions.

God bless America.