On this day in ...... 2009, Natalya Estemirova (right), a 51-year-old journalist and human rights advocate whose documentation had made her "a central source of information on abuses in Chechnya," was found dead of gunshot wounds near a highway in Ingushetia, 50 miles from her home in the Chechen capital city of Grozny, from which she'd been kidnapped hours earlier. Estemirova had worked since 1999 for the human rights group Memorial. She was a co-recipient of the 2005 Robert Schuman Medal, awarded on account of her human rights work by a group within the European Parliament. In the years leading up to the incident, reported The New York Times,
Estemirova focused on kidnappings that she believed had been carried out under the authority of the Chechen president, Ramzan A. Kadyrov, who has enjoyed unwavering public support from the Kremlin.
The Times said this past February that investigators believed they knew the shooter, "but have been unable to arrest the suspect."
