Zarema Sadulayeva (left), the head of a charity for victims of the Chechen wars, has been found shot dead, along with her husband, Alik Dzhabrailov.
Police found the bodies of Sadulayeva and Dzhabrailov on August 11 in the trunk of a car in a suburb of Grozny. Both had been shot dead after being abducted from the office of their charity in the capital on August 10.
Sadulayeva headed a Russian NGO, Save the Generations, which provided medical and psychological help to young victims of the fighting in the Chechen Republic. Among those it helps are children who lost limbs during the region’s separatist struggle against Moscow.
Her husband shared her work. They had married recently, after he had been jailed for four years on charges of links to armed separatist groups.
Human rights representatives who knew the two young people say they were not politically active.
“There was no political element [to their work],” said Lyudmila Alekseyeva of the Moscow Helsinki rights group. “They just helped disabled children and children from poor families.”
The killings were condemned by Human Rights Watch (HRW). The group’s deputy chief in Moscow, Tatyana Lokshina, called the murders "a horrendous crime."
The chief of the Moscow Helsinki Group (left), Lyudmila Alekseyeva, said she holds Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov responsible for the murders since he is obliged to provide safety for the republic’s citizens.
The killings come less than a month after the murder of one of Chechnya’s most prominent rights activists, Natalya Estemirova (right), under similar circumstances.
In both cases, the victims were bundled into cars by unidentified men, taken to remote locations, and shot to death.
Russian human rights activists are urging the country’s authorities to guarantee their safety in the volatile North Caucasus region.
Several of Russia’s leading human rights activists issued a statement on August 11 expressing their concerns over the frequent abduction, torture, and killing of rights activists in the North Caucasus.
The authors of the statement called the murder "an outlaw execution" and urged Russian authorities "to stop the terror, find, and punish the killers."
The statement was signed by such prominent human rights activists as Helsinki Group in Moscow chief Lyudmila Alekseyeva, For Human Rights movement leader Lev Ponomarev, Public Committee to Protect Scientists head Ernst Cherny, and others.
Also see:
Russia: Killing of NGO Activist Silences Another Independent Voice in Chechnya, by Article 19
Murder of Zarema Sadulayeva and her husband: the situation in Chechnya is becoming untenable, President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe , 11 August 2009
