No political will to find rights activist Estemirova’s real murderers – activists

(Interfax – MOSCOW, August 15, 2013) Russian human rights activists do not believe the murder of Memorial center activist Natalya Estemirova in Grozny is being properly investigated and say there is no political will to find the actual murderers.

“It is certain that there is no political will to solve this case,” Svetlana Gannushkina, the head of the Civil Assistance human rights committee and former colleague of Estemirova, told Interfax on Thursday.

It was announced earlier on Thursday that the deadline of the investigation into Estemirova’s murder was once again extended.

“The investigation is currently proceeding in the wrong direction. The idea that Natalya Estemirova was killed by a militant, who is dead now, is still being harped on. They have chosen it as the only avenue. Instructions have been issued. Not only is this theory being explored, but they are working to prove it,” Gannushkina said.

The Memorial human rights center does not believe in the Investigative Committee’s theory that Estemirova was killed by militant Alkhazur Bashayev, who was declared internationally wanted. “We reduced this theory to powder two years ago. They are trying to sell us last year’s snow,” Memorial leader Alexander Cherkasov told Interfax on July 15.

Bashayev’s responsibility for the crime was ruled out after DNA evidence figuring into the case was compared with the DNA of Bashayev’s close relative living in France.

Russian Investigative Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin told Interfax in July that an investigation into Estemirova’s murder was continuing. “The investigation into this criminal case has never been suspended, and its deadline has been extended until August 15, 2013. It has been determined now that Alkhazur Bashayev was involved in the murder of Estemirova,” Markin said at the time.

He said also that Bashayev was in hiding and that he had been put on an international most wanted list and had been charged in absentia with participation in an illegal armed group, abduction, murder and arms trafficking.

The investigation was pursuing the theory that Estemirova was killed as revenge for her reports on the recruitment of militants by Bashayev and an assault on the family of a Moscow businessman and for discrediting Chechen governmental bodies.

“In 2010, a request for legal assistance was sent to authorities in the French Republic, no response has yet arrived,” Markin said.

Estemirova, an employee of the Grozny branch of Memorial, was kidnapped in Grozny on July 15, 2009. Her dead body, bearing gunshot wounds, was later found near an administrative border between Chechnya and Ingushetia.

Estemirova was a friend of Novaya Gazeta investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who was shot dead in Moscow on October 7, 2006, and a friend of lawyer Stanislav Markelov, who was killed in the spring of 2009.

After Estemirova’s murder, Memorial had to suspend its office’s operations in Chechnya for some time.

Investigative Committee Chairman Alexander Bastrykin said in September 2010 that the investigation into Estemirova’s murder had made significant progress.