Toita Estamirova. Source: Estamirov family. It had been months since Russian riot police shot five members of Ruslan Yandarov’s wife’s family, including a pregnant woman and a one year-old boy, in a bloody rampage in Grozny, Chechnya. The incident had shocked many in Europe and the US, eliciting a reluctant promise from Russia to investigate.
Yet, Ruslan told me, Russian investigators had never even bothered to contact the family, take statements from the people who discovered the bodies, or collect bullets and other evidence from the crime scene. A gentle, soft-spoken lawyer in his forties, Ruslan was dejected. The thought that this horrific crime would go unpunished was too much to bear.
