Authorities claim to have identified human rights activist’s murderer

Alexander Bastrykin, the chief investigator at the Russian prosecutor’s office, today told a visiting delegation from the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists that investigators have identified the person who killed human rights activist Natalia Estemirova and hope to arrest him soon. Bastrykin said the evidence gathered in the course of the investigation left no doubt that this was the person who killed Estemirova in the North Caucasus in July 2009. The police know in which republic the suspect is currently located and expect to arrest him in the next few days, he added. The Russian human rights NGO Memorial’s representative in Chechnya, Estemirova was kidnapped on 15 July 2009 in the Chechen capital of Grozny. Her body was found a few hours later in the neighbouring republic of Ingushetia. “On the face of it, Bastrykin’s statement is good news but it will not satisfy human rights activists until the promised arrest takes place and a trial is held at which the suspect is demonstrated to be Estemirova’s killer,” Reporters Without Borders said. “We have not forgotten that the investigation into Novaya Gazeta reporter Anna Politkovskaya’s murder and the trial of her alleged killers were a complete fiasco, one that showed that there is no political will in present-day Russia to solve the murders of journalists and human rights activists,” Reporters Without Borders added. “The people who ordered these murders are still at large and show no sign of being arrested, and that is outrageous.” A police source speaking on condition of anonymity already talked last February of solving the Estemirova murder. Then President Medvedev said in July that the police knew the murderer’s identity. But Memorial voiced scepticism about these claims as there were indications that the suspect was former Chechen rebel Alkhazur Bashayev, who had conveniently been shot dead in November 2009. The deaths of Estemirova and Politkovskaya, who had covered human rights abuses in Chechnya, highlighted the violence that prevails in present-day Russia and especially in the North Caucasus.