Who murdered Natalia Estemirova?

Last month, just a few days before the first anniversary of the murder of journalist and human rights activist Natalia Estemirova, Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov accused members of Memorial, one of Russia’s most important human rights organizations, of being enemies of the state.
They are getting big salaries from the west and in order to report on their activities they write all kinds of nonsense and filth on the Internet. That is why they are not my opponents. They are the enemies of the people, enemies of the law, enemies of the state, he declared in a television interview.
The Russian human rights community denounced the President’s loathsome accusations. They were but an element however, of a broader campaign to discredit the human rights movement in Chechnya and an inauspicious sign just a few days before July 15, date of Natalia Estemirova’s murder in 2009.
A human rights activist, Kheda Saratova, sought clarification, called President Kadyrov’s office, and spoke to his press officer.
I asked him what the president's words meant and if, as a human rights activist in Chechnya, I was now considered a criminal by the government. And he answered me, 'You should cut down your activity’, she told RFE/RL.
The warning was thus clear…
Oleg Orlov, the chairman of Memorial accused President Kadyrov last year of being responsible for Natalia Estemirova’s murder. The latter sued him for slander and Orlov was compelled by a Russian court to pay $2,200 in damages.
Last month, Orlov was charged with libel in the same case, prompting many observers to accuse Kadyrov of judicial harassment against Memorial.
Natalia Estemirova, 51, was kidnapped in front of her home in Grozny, Chechnya on July 15, 2009.
Her body was found the next day in the neighboring province of Ingushetia. She had been shot to the head and chest.
A researcher for the human rights organization Memorial, she had been investigating human rights abuses in Chechnya since 1999, abuses that she linked directly to President Kadyrov and Vladimir Putin, President of Russia between 2000 and 2008, and currently Prime Minister.
One year later, no progress has been made in the murder investigation.
Russian and foreign human rights organization recently denounced what the International Federation of Human Rights called the lack of transparency and seriousness in the examination into the case.
Last February, the authorities claimed they had discovered the identity of the culprits. A prosecutor, Igor Sobol, stated that the murder weapon had been found and that there were now objective grounds to identify a group of people responsible for the murder, he told the NYT.
Yet, no arrests were ever made.
The authorities however have suggested that Chechen militant Alkhazur Bashayev, killed by the security forces in November 2009, was responsible for the murder.
Natalia Estemirova’s friends and colleagues are skeptical however, since it does not appear that she ever wrote about Mr. Bashayev in any of her reports for Memorial.
Mr. Bashayev, nevertheless, is the perfect suspect, as far as the authorities are concerned. The man, now dead, was an anti-Kadyrov rebel, thus exonerating the Chechen President and his security forces from all potential responsibility in the murder, and by extension, in all other egregious human rights abuses in Chechnya.
The main version put forward is very convenient. The killer is a militant, so he is an opponent of the Russian Federation. The killer is dead, so he will not be brought before a court and will not be able to challenge the accusations. This also means the case can be closed. We believe all this has little to do with justice, Aleksandr Cherkasov, of Memorial, told RFE/RL.
In 2009, the number of kidnappings and murders in Chechnya doubled.
According to Memorial, 93 kidnappings were registered.
Natalia Estemirova’s murder, shortly followed by those of Zarena Sadulayeva and her husband, Alik Dzhabrailov, of the charity organization Save the Generations, in August 2009, was a clear signal that human rights activism will not be tolerated in Chechnya and Russia.
They first killed Natasha, and now they are trying to kill our activity. Chechen authorities declared an open war against us, Yekatena Sokirianskaia, a friend of Natalia who works at Memorial, told Anna Nemtsova of foreignpolicy.com.
It is now virtually impossible for Memorial to continue its investigative work in Chechnya. Activists are routinely followed, harassed and intimidated. Many have had to flee the republic and seek refuge in Norway, France and the US.
Furthermore, potential witnesses are more reluctant to come forward and assist those activists still investigating on the ground.
We often hear from people: You could not protect your Natasha (Natalia Estemirova), so how can you help me? People choked by fear for their beloved ones feel reluctant to tell us about their troubles, Sokirianskaia added.
Those journalists striving to remain independent are also under threat.
Reporters in the North Caucasus fear for their lives, the Russian journalist Fatima Tlisova told RFE/RL.
Even in Russia itself, those journalists brazen enough to investigate official wrongdoing and corruption do so at great risk.
Mikhail Beketov was one those brave reporters investigating suspicious land deals, particularly one involving the building of a highway between St. Petersburg and Moscow, in Khimki forest, a venture potentially highly profitable for local officials.
In November 2008, he was attacked just outside his home. Previously, his car had been blown up…
He has not spoken a word since the assault, having suffered brain damage, and is now confined to a wheelchair…
Yuri Grachev, a 73-year-old newspaper editor was also assaulted and hospitalized after running a series on the attempts of local politicians to remain in office without standing for reelection. The police’s initial investigation of the incident concluded that, in a drunken stupor, he had fallen and injured himself. Prosecutors then accused him of committing libel in his newspaper, no doubt, in order to close it.
The system will stop at nothing to break you, he told the NYT.
Pyotr Lipatov, editor of an opposition newspaper called Consensus and Truth, was beaten up by three individuals at a protest rally. Witnesses filmed the assault, and the assailants were later identified as police officers…
No charges were ever brought against them, however.
Instead, prosecutors charged the editor with attempting to disseminate negative stereotypes and negative images of members of the security forces, according to the NYT.
The editor of a newspaper dedicated to pursuing Mr. Beketov’s campaigns, Igor Belousov, was arrested and charged with drug dealing…
We used to have so many journalists here, but they have all suffered and have all given up. Only I remained, and now I am giving up, he told the NYT.
In today’s Russia, being a journalist worthy of the name takes true heroism …
President Medvedev has in the past denounced what he himself has called Russia’s legal nihilism.
Yet what has he, and his Prime Minister, Mr. Putin done about it?
Last May, the Russian President stated that he would support the efforts of human rights activists.
Following President Kadyrov’s wicked accusations against them, Russian human rights organizations have again appealed to Mr. Medvedev to take action at last.
If you think that there’s something I don’t know, that is not the case. I know more than everyone present here, he told a gathering of human rights activists that he had invited to the Kremlin last May.
If that is the case, then why is Kadyrov still President of Chechnya?
Mr. Medvedev has repeatedly stated his intention of enforcing the rule of law in Russia.
What is he waiting for?
Also last May, just before a meeting in Russia on human rights issues between Michael McFaul, special assistant to the President on National Security Affairs and Vladislav Surkov, the Kremlin’s deputy chief of staff, President Obama wrote in his National Security Strategy: America's commitment to democracy, human rights, and the rule of law are essential sources of our strength and influence in the world...
Why is he not more forcefully urging the Russians to enforce their own laws?
What has the EU done to support Russia’s beleaguered human rights and democracy activists?
What has France (the French are wont to consider their country as la patrie des droits de l’homme, the homeland of human rights) done to goad MM. Medvedev and Putin into finally doing away with this legal nihilism, and at last conduct serious investigations into the murders of journalists and human rights activists?
Is it not time for our leaders to explain to Russia that it cannot hope to become a leading and respected member of the international community (a status that it craves) if it persists in abetting the crimes of thugs the likes of Kadyrov?
Though she knew her life was in danger, Natalia Estemirova refused to flee abroad and always returned to Grozny to continue her work, tirelessly.
I can’t do things any differently, she told her friend Tatiana Lokshina.
Her friends and admirers were well aware of that, and counted on her determination to seek justice for all Chechens.
She had very strict views about what had to be done, and about what she had to do herself. For our part, we of course tried to persuade her to stop, to leave Grozny, to live for herself. But to be completely honest, we didn’t persuade her enough. Because we needed her very much to be there, in Grozny. Because there was no one who could do this work better than her. Because to whom we would otherwise have come, with whom would we have consulted, whom would we have asked to finish whatever could not be fitted into a week-long trip to the region? wrote Tatiana Lokshina.
Who killed Natalia Estemirova?
MM. Medvedev and Putin are not interested in the answer to that question.
No doubt they know the answer too well such that we shall never know.
Justice is the least of their concerns.
As a result, we should have no more regard for them then we have for Kadyrov, their kinglet in Chechnya…
(the photograph above can be found here)