A Russian editor-in-chief has expressed concern that the killers of a prominent human rights activist and journalist brutally slain on 15 July will never face justice.

“Unfortunately the Russian authorities, although using hard wording to condemn such crimes, do almost nothing to find their organisers, bring the cases to court and punish the killers,” Galina Sidorova, editor-in-chief of the Russian monthly Sovershenno Secretno, and a member of the IPI board, told IPI researchers.

Natalia Estemirova, known for her fearless exposure of human rights abuses in Chechnya and a regular contributor to the newspaper Novaya Gazeta, was abducted on the morning of 15 July in the Chechen capital, Grozny, while she was on her way to work. Witnesses saw her being forced into a car by four men and heard her shout that she was being kidnapped. About nine hours later, her lifeless body was found in the neighbouring province of Ingushetia. She had been shot twice in the head at short range.

“Estemirova is the fourth journalist to be killed in Russia this year, in what appears to be a concerted move to eliminate critics of the government,” said IPI Director David Dadge.

Estemirova’s reports often held Chechnya’s authorities, including Chechen Prime Minister Ramzan Kadyrov, responsible for extrajudicial killings, abductions and other grave human rights abuses committed in Chechnya. The journalist and activist was aware of the dangers she faced.

“In Chechnya […] those who witness abuse keep silent, for if they speak they can soon become a victim,” Estemirova said in 2007, upon receiving an award for her work.

Oleg Orlov, director of Memorial, the human rights organisation with which Estemirova was working, accused Kadyrov of being responsible for Estemirova’s murder. “Ramzan Kadyrov is responsible, not only because he leads Chechnya. He threatened Natalia, told her that her hands would be covered in blood and that he destroys bad people,” Orlov was reported as saying.

The killers of another prominent Russian journalist, Anna Politkovskaya, who was murdered in October 2006, have yet to be brought to justice. Three men, accused of involvement in the killing, were acquitted by a Russian military court in February this year. Russia’s Supreme Court has since overturned the acquittal and ordered that the three men face a retrial.

IPI posthumously named Politkovskaya as one of its World Press Freedom Heroes on 7 December 2006, on the occasion of the two-month commemoration of her death.