Natalya Estemirova

Estemirova’s murder was provoked by the people who murdered Politkovskaya and Litvinenko. I am pretty sure that that’s Berezovsky’s job. Politkovskaya was speaking about Chechnya all the time. When everything became fine in our republic, and there was nothing to blame us for, was the perfect time to kill her and shift the blame on Kadyrov to undermine the system.

In January 2010, Ramzan Kadyrov, in an interview to Russia Today accused Boris Berezovsky of murdering Estemirova. Despite expressing confidence that the crime will be solved, he acknowledged that as of that date it had not:

In February 2010 an anonymous source in the Russian law enforcement bodies claimed that investigators knew Estemirova's murderer. Yet, the murderer wasn't caught, nor was the organizer of the crime identified.

Journalists of Novaya Gazeta together with the human rights society Memorial and the International Federation for Human Rights are conducting their own investigation, they also monitor the official investigation. According to them, the main version of the official investigators is that Estemirova was murdered by rebel Alkhazur Bashayev, a member of a jamaat in the Chechen village of Shalazhy (Шалажи). On 15 January 2010 during a search in the house of Alkhazur Bashayev, the investigators found a large stockpile of weapons, including the handgun that was used to murder Estemirova and a counterfeit police id with a photograph of Bashayev. On 7 February 2010, they found an abandoned VAZ-2107 car that was identified as the car bought by Bashayev. In the car they found a suppressor made of the same material as the fragment found on the crime scene. The plant fragments found on the suspension on the car were similar to the plants found at the crime scene.

Estemirova was abducted on 15 July 2009 from her home in Grozny, Chechnya. According to Tanya Lokshina of the Moscow bureau of Human Rights Watch, unknown individuals abducted Estemirova near her house in Grozny at around 8:30 a.m. Her colleagues raised an alert when she did not come to a planned meeting and went to her home, found witnesses and questioned them. Two witnesses reportedly saw Estemirova being pushed into a car shouting that she was being abducted. Lokshina said Estemirova was abducted as she was working on "extremely sensitive" cases of human rights abuses in Chechnya. Lokshina said that she had been targeted for her professional activities. Human Rights Watch had demanded to the Kremlin and Ramzan Kadyrov that Estemirova be returned home safely.

According to the official information, on 13 November 2009, Bashayev was killed by an air strike during a special operation led by Adam Delimkhanov.

Estemirova received the Right Livelihood Award as a representative of Memorial at a ceremony in the Swedish parliament building in 2004. Along with Sergey Kovalyov, chairman of Memorial, she was awarded the Robert Schuman Medal by the Group of the European People's Party in 2005. In October 2007, she was awarded the first Anna Politkovskaya Award, honouring brave women human rights defenders from war and conflict, who speak up for the victims, often at great personal risk. The Anna Politkovskaya Award is presented annually to honour the memory of Russian investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya on the anniversary of her murder on 7 October 2006, by Reach All Women in War (RAW), an international human rights organization supporting women human rights defenders in war and conflict zones. Estemirova worked together with investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya and human rights lawyer Stanislav Markelov, both of whom were also murdered, in 2006 and 2009, respectively.

Born in Kamyshlov, Sverdlovsk Oblast to Russian and Chechen parents, Estemirova graduated with a history degree from Grozny University and taught history in a local high school until 1998. In 1991, she worked as a correspondent for the local newspapers The Voice and The Worker of Grozny. While working on TV in Grozny, she filmed thirteen short documentaries about victims of the Russian punitive practices. She participated in the Organization of Filtration Camps Inmates as a press secretary. The widow of a Chechen policeman, she gathered evidence on human rights violations since the beginning of the Second Chechen war in 1999, leaving her daughter in Yekaterinburg with relatives. In 2000, she became a representative for the Memorial Human Rights Centre in her native Grozny. She visited many hospitals in Chechnya and Ingushetia, taking hundreds of photographs of child victims of the war.

Natalya Khusainovna Estemirova (Russian: Ната́лья Хусаи́новна Эстеми́рова ; 28 February 1958 – 15 July 2009) was a Russian human rights activist and board member of the Russian human rights organization Memorial. Estemirova was abducted by unknown persons on 15 July 2009 around 8:30 a.m. from her home in Grozny, Chechnya, as she was working on "extremely sensitive" cases of human rights abuses in Chechnya. Two witnesses reported they saw Estemirova being pushed into a car shouting that she was being abducted. Her remains were found with bullet wounds in the head and chest area at 4:30 p.m. in woodland 100 metres (330 ft) away from the federal road "Kavkaz" near the village of Gazi-Yurt, Ingushetia.