Russian president Dmitry Medvedev, in his first public comments on the murder of a prominent Russian human rights activist, said today he was determined to solve the "very sad" crime and punish those responsible.
Mr Medvedev was answering a question about the killing on Wednesday of Natalia Estemirova, who was best known for her work documenting human rights abuses in the troubled Muslim region of Chechnya.
"It is a very sad event, it was linked to her professional activities," Mr Medvedev said. "... it will be investigated in the most thorough way."
The Russian leader was speaking at a news conference held with German chancellor Angela Merkel during a visit to Germany to discuss an agenda dominated by business issues.
A human rights group blamed Chechnya's president for the kidnap and murder Ms Estemirova, the latest in a series of killings of establishment critics in Russia.
Ms Estemirova, a close friend of murdered Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, worked for the human rights organisation Memorial in the Chechen capital Grozny and documented abuses by law enforcement agencies.
She was abducted yesterday in Chechnya and her body was found later in woodland in neighbouring Ingushetia.
A Kremlin spokeswoman earlier said president Dmitry Medvedev was "outraged" and had ordered an investigation.
Memorial's chairman Oleg Orlov pointed the blame at Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov, a former rebel turned Kremlin loyalist.
"I know, I am sure of it, who is guilty for the murder of Natalia . . . His name is Ramzan Kadyrov," he said in a statement on Memorial's website www.memo.ru late on Wednesday.
"Ramzan already threatened Natalia, insulted her, considered her a personal enemy."
Interfax news agency quoted Kadyrov as saying the perpetrators of her "monstrous" murder "deserve no support and must be punished as the cruellest of criminals".
The murder is the latest in a series of killings of journalists and human rights defenders in Russia which has drawn international condemnation and led to questions about Medvedev's pledges to uphold the rule of law and build a freer society.
"The body had two wounds to the head, it was clear she had been murdered in the morning," Madina Khadziyeva, a spokeswoman at the Ingush Interior Ministry, told Reuters.
Amnesty International and the New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) said she was shot.
Ms Estemirova was a single mother aged about 50, friends said, and leaves a teenage daughter. She was snatched as she left her house, and cried out she was being kidnapped as she was forced into a white vehicle and driven away, said Memorial colleagues and HRW.
The United States has condemned her killing and called on the Russian government to bring to justice those responsible for the crime.
Reuters