Natalya Estemirova, a Russian human rights activist was murdered on July 15th after dedicating much of her life to investigating abuses by the Chechen regime. She was shot twice in the head at close-range after she was kidnapped and bundled into a car in Grozny, the capital of Chechnya. Natalya Estemirova, who was one of Anna Politkovskaya's key collaborators, was found dead near the city of Nazran in Ingushetia. A single mother in her early 40s, Estemirova had collected evidence of human rights abuses in Chechnya since the start of the second war there in 1999. As well as the murdered Politkovskaya, she worked with Stanislav Markelov, a prominent lawyer and another opponent of rights abuses in Chechnya, who was shot and killed on a Moscow street in January.

Natalya Estemirova was the first to be awarded the Anna Politkovskaya Prize in 2007 and had been awarded the Swedish Parliament Prize ‘A right to existence' in 2004. In 2005 she received the Robert Schumann Medal from the European Parliament.