Mourners hail slain Chechen activist

WEEPING mourners walked through Chechnya’s capital yesterday to honour activist Natalya Estemirova, whose brazen kidnapping and execution-style killing shocked Russia’s beleaguered human rights community and prompted international outrage.

In Moscow, Russia’s leading rights advocates blamed Chechnya’s Kremlin-backed president for the killing. They also said Prime Minister Vladimir Putin shared responsibility for the slaying and for the lawlessness plaguing the North Caucasus region. “They have killed our soul,” said Oleg Orlov, head of the Memorial rights group that Estemirova worked for.

Estemirova’s gunshot body was found on Wednesday, hours after she was kidnapped by four men not far from her home in the Chechen capital of Grozny.