UN Body Offers Help on Estemirova

GENEVA — Seven UN human rights experts asked Russia on Tuesday to allow them into the country to help investigate last week’s murder of leading rights activist Natalya Estemirova.

The move by the seven — from developed and developing countries — followed a call by UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay for a thorough and independent probe into the killing, which sparked worldwide condemnation.

The experts said they recognized that the Russian authorities had condemned the murder and pledged that every effort would be taken to catch and punish the killers of ­Estemirova, who represented Moscow rights body Memorial in Chechnya.

“However, these assurances will be worth little unless the authorities take steps that go beyond what has been done in the past, which has all too often led to a cycle of impunity,” they said in a statement issued through the Untied Nations.

“We offer our assistance to the Russian authorities in light of the failure to effectively and impartially investigate the killings and attacks on a number of human rights defenders in recent years … and to bring the perpetrators to justice.”

The seven, special rapporteurs to the UN Human Rights Council, included extrajudicial execution sleuth Philip Alston of Australia; violence against women specialist Yakin Erturk of Turkey; and Manfred Nowak of Austria, who reports on torture.

Their intervention was seen as aimed at getting around the blockage on quick investigations on such issues in the council, where Russia lines up with a majority group of Islamic and African states that resists action affecting any of them.

Estemirova was abducted in her native Chechnya on July 15 and her body was found in the neighboring Ingushetia later that day.