Missing human rights activists found dead in Chechnya (Roundup)

Aug 11, 2009, 13:00 GMT

   Grozny, Chechnya/Moscow - A prominent human rights activist and her husband were found dead near the Chechen capital of Grozny on Tuesday, a day after they disappeared.

   The bodies of Zarema Sadulayeva and her husband Alik Djibralov were found in the luggage compartment of a car, the Chechnya rights organization Memorial confirmed. They had been shot to death.

   The incident comes less than a month after the murder of Natalya Estemirova, another human rights activist operating in Chechnya, an incident which provoked a harsh outcry internationally.

Sadulayeva and her husband headed the non-governmental organization Let's Save the Generation. The charity helps young people in the troubled southern Russian republic, which was ravaged by war between separatists and Russian forces in the 1990s.

  Gunmen abducted the couple on Monday from their office, according to friends and relatives. Sadulayeva and her husband were forced into a car, said members of Memorial.

   Police in Chechnya initially said there was no indication of a kidnapping. Witnesses claimed the couple had entered the car of their own accord. Prosecutors have started an investigation into their deaths.

Chechnya's pro-Russian President Ramzan Kadyrov called the slaying of the two rights activists 'cynical and inhuman.' After the death of Estemirova, Kadyrov denied accusations he had ordered her killing.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier expressed his shock at the latest killing.

   'I am dismayed over the murder of Zarema Sadulayeva and her husband and fiercely condemn this cowardly act,' Steinmeier said.

   The foreign minister appealed to the Russian authorities to find the perpetrators without delay and bring them to justice.

Russian human rights activists have criticized pro-Moscow politicians in the northern Caucasus for failing to create jobs and establish an effective police force and independent judiciary.

'None of that exists there. And the only voice of the [people, the human rights workers, are systematically being eliminated,' said Alexander Broad, director of the Moscow Bureau for Human Rights.