Anna Arutunyan

Less than a month after the kidnapping and murder of a Chechen rights activist, a husband and wife team who helped Chechen children were found shot dead last Tuesday in Grozny. The latest murders bore all the markings of the previous one - a kidnapping, passionate pledges by the republic's leader, Ramzan Kadyrov, to solve the crime and witnesses too paralyzed by fear to testify.

But unlike Natalia Estemirova, who documented abuses by Chechen law enforcement, Zarema Sadulayeva and her husband, Alik Dzhabrailov, worked in an area far from politics. Through their small, Grozny-based organization, Spasem Pokoleniye, they aided children who were made invalids by the war.

"This couple weren't even rights activists, they were doing humanitarian work," Nikolai Svanidze, a human rights ombudsman at the Public Chamber was quoted by RIA Novosti as saying.

Svanidze said that he would ask President Dmitry Medvedev to meet with leading rights activist to discuss the latest murders in the North Caucasus. "But either way, it was a double murder of public figures," he added.

What also set this murder apart from the latest spate of attacks was evidence that men who came for them in their office on the afternoon of August 10 identified themselves politely as members of the security service.

"They were without masks, and relatively polite," said Memorial official Alexander Cherkasov, who knew Sadulayeva and worked with her on occasion. "It seemed like they were being taken away only for a chat."

The connection to the republic's security services, which are controlled by Ramzan Kadyrov, is "obvious," said Cherkasov. "These people did not cover their faces. So, unlike the murder of Natalia Estemirova, it should not be so difficult to uncover."

Kadyrov who in an earlier interview with Radio Liberty said that Estemirova had "no honor or shame," expressed outrage at the latest murder, and said that it was a personal "point of honor" to get to the bottom of it. "Bandits are trying to create an environment of general fear and suspicion to get society to stop working together to rebuild the republic," Kadyrov was quoted by RIA Novosti as saying.

Later Kadyrov said that the killers may have been targeting Sadulayeva's husband, Alik Dzhabrailov, who used to be a member of a rebel militant group and served four years in prison for his activities. According to Kadyrov, he might have become the victim of a blood feud for Chechens he may have killed in the past. The Federal Investigative Committee of the General Prosecutor's Office, which sent officials to Grozny last week for a special investigation, said in a statement that it "does not rule out that the main motive of the criminals could have been the removal of Dzhabrailov."

But Cherkasov said this was very unlikely. "The people who came to the office had asked specifically for Zarema," he said. As for Dzhab­railov, "like many members of the Chechen elite, including Ramzan Kadyrov, he was once connected to illegal rebel militant groups. The majority of those surrounding Kadyrov come from this background. This is normal for a republic that has been at war."

However, Cherkasov said that people like Dzhabrailov who have been amnestied or released from prison and have not joined Kadyrov's forces often disappear or are kidnapped, possibly because security forces are seeking additional information from them that they did not divulge in court. But, he added, it would be illogical to ask for Zarema as the head of the Spasem Pokoleniye organization if they were actually targeting Dzhabrailov.

Meanwhile, investigators say that witnesses are too scared to talk about such murders. "The investigation into the killings of Chechen rights activists in July and August is very difficult," RIA Novosti quoted Investigative Committee chairman Alexander Bastrykin as saying on Friday. "There is a huge residential area, with hundreds of people, and today we found only two women who are ready to describe the culprits."

President Dmitry Medvedev has ordered the General Prosecutor's Office, the Interior Ministry and the Federal Security Service to uncover the crime, a source in the presidential press service said.