Who killed Natalya Estemirova?

Who killed Natalya Estemirova?

 

Colleagues of Ms. Estemirova say her murder Wednesday

is part of a pattern that shows cost of a Kremlin pact

with Chechnyan President Ramzan Kadyrov

 

By Fred Weir

Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

from the July 16, 2009 edition -

http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0716/p06s06-woeu.html

 

Moscow

 

The murder of human rights activist Natalya Estemirova,

kidnapped in Chechnya and shot execution-style in

neighboring Ingushetia on Wednesday, has shocked the

Kremlin and led President Dmitry Medvedev to pledge a

full investigation.

 

But leaders of Memorial, the Russian human rights

organization that Ms. Estemirova worked with, and other

human rights experts here say her death can be added to

a fast-growing price tag for a Faustian pact. They say

that pro-Moscow strongman Ramzan Kadyrov "pacified"

rebellious Chechnya, and in exchange, the Kremlin

agreed to turn a blind eye to his methods.

 

"We know that Kadyrov controls Chechnya, and we know

what [pro-Moscow] Chechen officials have said about

Memorial, and Natalya, and her work. We have no

illusions," says Alexander Cherkasov, a member of

Memorial's board and longtime colleague of Estemirova's.

 

The head of Memorial, Oleg Orlov, told journalists

Thursday that Mr. Kadyrov had threatened Estemirova in

private conversation and admitted to her that he did

not regret killing "bad people."

 

Mr. Cherkasov says Estemirova, one of a tiny handful of

human rights workers to monitor the situation in

Chechnya, was practically the sole surviving source of

information on rights violations in the tiny war-torn

republic, including the government's alleged use of

death squads, kidnapping, and the burning of the family

homes of unrepentant separatist rebels.

 

"She documented all the things that stood in

contradiction to the pleasant image of Chechnya created

by the authorities," he says.

 

Fourth prominent Kadyrov adversary to be killed

 

Estemirova, a single mother who lived in the Chechen

capital of Grozny with her teenage daughter, was

abducted outside her apartment building by armed men on

Wednesday and bundled into a car. Her body was later

found with gunshot wounds by a roadside in the

neighboring republic of Ingushetia, which is also in

the throes of a mounting insurgency by Islamist extremists.

 

Her murder is the latest in a growing toll of Kadyrov

critics, including the late Anna Politkovskaya, an

investigative journalist with the opposition weekly

Novaya Gazeta and close friend of Estemirova, who was

shot in her Moscow apartment elevator almost three

years ago. Others killed in the past year include human

rights lawyer Stanislav Markelov, gunned down on a

Moscow street last January; Umar Israilov, a former

Kadyrov bodyguard turned whistle-blower, murdered in

Vienna in January; and Sulim Yamadayev, a former

Chechen commander and Kadyrov foe, murdered in Dubai,

United Arab Emirates, in March. Mr. Yamadayev's

brother, Ruslan, was assassinated in Moscow last September.

 

"One after another, people whom Kadyrov regards as

adversaries keep getting murdered in contract killings

that are often conducted in an open and arrogant

manner," says Masha Lipman, editor of the Pro et Contra

journal published by the Carnegie Center in Moscow.

 

"This is the price Russia pays for entrusting Chechnya,

and the task of maintaining order there, to Kadyrov,"

she says. "Kadyrov is absolute master of his territory.

He rules as he sees fit, without regard for the Russian

Constitution or law."

 

Track suits and pet tiger

 

Kadyrov, a flamboyant figure who wears a track suit --

even on visits to the Kremlin -- and keeps a pet tiger

in his palatial villa, became de facto ruler of

Chechnya after rebels working for the late Chechen

terrorist Shamil Basayev murdered his father, Akhmad

Kadyrov, in a spectacular 2004 stadium bombing.

 

He was later eased into Chechnya's presidency by a

Kremlin-orchestrated political process that critics say

cast a veneer of democracy over the Kremlin policy of

"Chechenization," turning over the job of defeating the

republic's long-running separatist rebellion to local forces.

 

In a statement following Estemirova's murder, Kadyrov

promised to take over the investigation personally. The

pledge inspires no confidence among human rights workers.

 

"I think [the killing] was a demonstrative political

execution, done in broad daylight by Chechnya's

paramilitary forces," which answer only to Kadyrov,

says Yevgeny Ikhlov, an expert with the Moscow-based

Movement for Human Rights, a grass-roots group.

 

He adds that the manner of the crime emphasizes the

Kremlin's powerlessness before the "Frankenstein

monster" it has created in Chechnya.

 

"They might as well have dumped the corpse on

Medvedev's doorstep, because it's a pure challenge to

federal authorities," he says. "It says: 'We'll do as

we please' inside Chechnya."

 

Russian experts say they expect Estemirova's murder to

be added to a long list of similar unsolved crimes,

including journalists like Politkovskaya and the

American Paul Klebnikov (who also wrote about

Chechnya), which have gone through years of legal

processes without resolution.

 

Russian Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev promised

Thursday that everything possible would be done to

solve what he called "a very complicated murder." But

his deputy, Arkady Yevdelev, told journalists that the

police would investigate causes other than Estemirova's

"public activity," including the possibility that her

murder was a "provocation" designed to discredit local

authorities, or perhaps a "robbery" or even an

unspecified matter connected with her "social life."

 

"I think this will end in a legal blind alley," says

Vladimir Pribilovsky, director of Panorama, an

independent Moscow think tank. "It's impossible to

investigate anything in Chechnya. The only person who

knows [the truth] is Ramzan Kadyrov."

_____________________________________________