Leading Russian human rights advocate Natalia Estemirova was murdered near Chechnya last week, the latest in a series of politically-motivated slayings in the Northern Caucuses.

According to eyewitness accounts, Estemirova was abducted in broad daylight on July 15 on the streets of Grozny, Chechnya. She yelled for help as her abductors dragged her into a white car and drove off, presumably for the neighboring republic of Ingushetia, where her body was found with two gunshot wounds.

The leader of the Memorial Human Rights Center in Grozni, Estemirova worked to improve government accountability and stop political killing, torture and disappearances throughout the Chechan republic. She won multiple international human rights awards for her decade-long fight for justice in Chechnya, including the Robert Schuman medal of the European Parliament in 2005, the Right Livelihood Award of the Swedish Parliament–sometimes called the Alternative Nobel Peace Prize–in 2004, and the Anna Politkovskaya Award in 2007.

Her work drew criticism from Chechan president Ramzan Kadyrov whose regime has been accused of rampant human rights abuses by Human Rights Watch and other international bodies. There has been a surge in political violence in Chechnya in recent weeks, including arbitrary detentions and extrajudicial executions.

Amnesty International condemned the killing, and called on the Russian government to conduct a full and transparent investigation into Estemirova’s death. Although Russian Federation President Dimitri Medvedev said through a spokesperson that he was “outraged” by the murder and would order a thorough investigation, international human rights organizations said a Russian-led inquiry must allow for oversight by the international community.

Estemirova was the latest in a series of human rights advocates, lawyers and journalists that have been targeted by Russian officials in recent years. In 2006, Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya was gunned down in her Moscow apartment for writing scathing editorials accusing the Chechan government of human rights violations. Last month, the Russian Supreme Court ordered a retrial for four men believed to have been involved with Politkovskaya’s murder after lower courts–whose rulings were suspect–had acquitted them. This year, Russian newspaper editor Vyacheslav Yaroshenko and Politkovskaya’s lawyer Stanislav Markelov were also murdered.

photo credit: squigglycircle’s Flickr photostream (Creative Commons)