In this Sept. 15, 2007 file photo Natalya Estemirova, a human rights activist, seen in the Chechen... 
(Musa Sadulayev/AP Photo)
Weeping mourners escorted the body of Natalya Estemirova through Chechnya's capital on Thursday, honoring the activist whose brazen kidnapping and execution-style killing shocked Russia's beleaguered human rights community and prompted international outrage.
In Moscow, Russia's leading rights advocates blamed Chechnya's Kremlin-backed president for the killing and said Prime Minister Vladimir Putin shared responsibility for the slaying and for the lawlessness plaguing the North Caucasus.
"They have killed our soul," said Oleg Orlov, head of the Memorial rights group that Estemirova worked for.
Estemirova's gunshot body was found Wednesday afternoon, hours after she was kidnapped by four men not far from her home in the Chechen capital, Grozny.
The killing, which activists quickly blamed on Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov, underscored the persistent crime and violence in the regions surrounding Chechnya. Rights groups said it also showed that Russia remains a place where political murders are committed with impunity.
"A terror campaign is being conducted in Russia — terror against people who dare say things that are uncomfortable and unpleasant for the authorities, who talk about the crimes of those in power," Orlov said.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said Estemirova was killed because of her work investigating abductions, killings and rampant rights abuses in Chechnya since the beginning of the second war there, in 1999. But he dismissed suspicions that Kadyrov was behind the murder, saying the killers likely intended that government officials be blamed.
"This provocation, if you want to call it thus, this crime, I am sure the person who committed it will be punished," Medvedev said at a news conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Munich.
In Grozny, about 100 mourners gathered to remember Estemirova outside Memorial's office, some sobbing, others talking among themselves.
Do you have more information about this topic? If so, please click here to contact the editors of ABC News.
