FILE - In this Sept. 15, 2007 file photo Natalya Estemirova, a human rights activist, seen in the... 
(AP)
A well-known Russian rights activist was found slain execution-style on Wednesday, hours after being kidnapped in Chechnya — the latest in a series of brazen murders targeting critics of the Kremlin's violent policies in the war-torn North Caucasus.
The daylight slaying of Natalya Estemirova follows the killings in recent years of reporters, lawyers and activists, and appeared to indicate that Russia remains a place where political murders are committed with impunity.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev reacted quickly to the murder — in contrast to other recent killings — expressing his condolences, and ordering the country's top investigative official "to take all necessary measures." His press spokeswoman Natalya Timakova said Estemirova's murder appeared to be related to her work.
The slaying came the same day as the release of a report she helped research that concluded there was enough evidence to demand that Russian officials, including Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, be called to account for crimes committed on their watch.
"She documented the most horrendous violations, mass executions," said Tatyana Lokshina, a Moscow researcher with the U.S.-based Human Rights Watch.
"She has done things no one else dared to do," she said.
Estemirova, a 50-year-old single mother, was reported kidnapped Wednesday morning by the prominent rights organization she worked for, Memorial. Chairman Oleg Orlov said that four men forced her into a car in the Chechen capital, Grozny, where she lived. He said witnesses heard her yell that she was being abducted.
About nine hours later, her body was found on a roadside in Ingushetia, which borders Chechnya to the west. There were two close-range bullet wounds in her head, according to Ingush Interior Ministry spokeswoman Madina Khadziyeva.
Estemirova had collected evidence of rights abuses in Chechnya since the start of the second war there in 1999. She was a key researcher for a recent Human Rights Watch report that accused Chechen authorities of burning more than two dozen houses in the past year to punish relatives of alleged rebels.
