She travelled regularly to the Chechen Republic, which is the most dangerous region for journalists to work in since 1994, the beginning of the first Chechen war. Anna’s articles were critical and represented the voices of hundreds of Chechens. The Human Rights Centre Memorial in the Russian Federation has documented that since 1994, 3000 to 5000 persons have involuntary disappeared. Anna investigated many of those cases.
It was Anna, who in the newspaper ‘Novaya Gazeta’ revealed the case of “Kadet”, whose real name was Sergei Lapin. He was tried and sentenced to prison for kidnapping and torturing Zelimkhan Murdalov during the second Chechen military campaign. Considering the dimension of the human rights violations during the Chechen conflict, only two persons have so far been brought to justice for such crimes. “Kadet” was one of them. In fact, three persons worked together for the conviction of “Kadet”: Anna Politkovskaya wrote about the case; Natalia Estimirova, a human rights activist from HRC Memorial in the Chechen Republic, collected witness accounts on the case; and the lawyer Stanislav Markelov represented the complainant. All three have since been brutally murdered.
No one has so far been convicted for these crimes. The Norwegian Helsinki Committee has closely followed the conflict and human rights violations in the North Caucasus since the beginning of 2000. Being a human rights defender in North Caucasus has never been as dangerous as it is now. Yesterday, on October 6th, a Moscow court awarded the Chechen president Ramzan Kadyrov compensation in a lawsuit he filed against HRC Memorial and its Chairman Oleg Orlov. Memorial claimed that Ramzan Kadyrov had personally threatened Natasha and that the Chechen president is politically responsible for the fact that the murder of Natalia Estimirova was possible. Memorial also has to present an official refutation within nine days.
