| Moscow, 23 August: According to human rights campaigners,
the murder of Natalya Estimirova, an activist of Memorial
(human rights centre), is not being investigated.
"The investigation is not moving. It has stagnated,"
Svetlana Gannushkina, head of the Citizens' Assistance committee
and a member of the council of the Memorial human rights centre,
told Interfax on Monday (23 August).
Natalya Estimirova, the most prominent human rights campaigner
in the North Caucasus, was kidnapped on 15 July 2009 in Groznyy,
Chechnya, and some time later her body with gunshot wounds
was found in neighbouring Ingushetia.
"It seems the investigation has adopted a certain version
of Estimirova's murder and does not want to pursue other lines
of inquiry. We believe this is wrong. The version adopted
by the investigation seems to us to be wrong and strange,"
Gannushkina said.
She said a complaint had been sent to the court following
the refusal of the investigating authorities to provide documents
to do with the investigation into Estimirova's death.
Earlier Estimirova's colleagues claimed the Investigations
Committee under the prosecutor's office (SKP) had not provided
any evidence that it had managed to identify the real murderers
of the rights campaigner.
In the middle of July a member of the Memorial council, Aleksandr
Cherkasov, said rebel Alkhazur Bashayev featured in the evidence
statement of victim Svetlana Estimirova, Natalya Estimirova's
sister.
"So far the investigation has not produced any other
names. To us, any lines of inquiry in which in one way or
another Bashayev features seem partly carefully constructed
and partly invented. The evidence and possible motives look
very doubtful to us," Cherkasov said.
"In good faith we passed to the investigation all the
materials we had. But what we know about the investigation
convinces us more and more that an attempt to blame the rebels
for the crime is under way," the rights campaigner said.
According to him, "the investigation should pursue all
possible lines of inquiry in order to reach the right conclusion".
"We know that for the past six months the investigation
has been interested in only one line of inquiry, involving
Alkhazur Bashayev. In the past six months there has been no
other questioning to do with Natasha's (short name for Natalya)
professional activity," the Memorial spokesman said.
Meanwhile, in the middle of July, the SKP described the criticism
of the investigation in the Estimirova murder case as unjustified.
"Despite significant progress in the investigation,
some representatives of human rights organizations, nevertheless,
are trying to accuse the investigation of being not open enough
and demanding well nigh a public investigation, accusing the
investigators of not taking their (human rights organizations')
information into account," Vladimir Markin, official
spokesman for the SKP, told Interfax at the time.
"All the information received from the human rights
campaigners was appended by the investigator to the criminal
case and checked by the investigation," Markin said.
According to him, the murderer has been identified. "His
involvement in the crime is proved by a whole quantity of
evidence and he is currently on the international and Russia-wide
wanted list," Markin said.
"Active measures are being taken not just to find the
killer but also to establish the mastermind behind the murder,"
the spokesman said.
Memorial is a leading Russian NGO monitoring human rights
in the North Caucasus.
Following Estimirova's murder, Memorial had to suspend the
work of its branch in Chechnya.
Oleg Orlov, the head of Memorial, was prosecuted for his
statement linking Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov to Estimirova's
death.
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