No headway on investigation into Estemirova murder case - Memorial
MOSCOW. Feb 28 (Interfax) - No headway is being made on the investigation into the murder of Natalya Estemirova, an activist of the Grozny division of the human rights center Memorial, Alexander Cherkasov, the head of the center Memorial, told Interfax on Friday.
"We demand more intensive investigation into this killing. No considerable progress has been made for years, except for the old and clearly fabricated story of militant involvement in it," Cherkasov said.
Estemirova would have turned 56 on Friday.
Human rights activists are holding a memorial for Estemirova in the Memorial Moscow office.
In September 2010, Russian Investigations Committee Director Alexander Bastrykin said the law enforcement agencies had made serious headway in this investigation
In the meantime, Investigations Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin earlier told Interfax the investigators have importance evidence in the case.
Estemirova was abducted in Grozny on July 15, 2009. Some time later, her body with gunshot wounds was found on the Chechen-Ingush border.
Estemirova was a prominent human rights activist in the Northern Caucasus. She was friends with Novaya Gazeta observer Anna Politkovskaya, who was killed in Moscow on October 7, 2006, and lawyer Stanislav Markelov, who was killed in Moscow in spring 2009.
Memorial had to suspend its operations in Chechnya for some time after the killing.
