Malika Umazheva, a prominent Chechen woman leader and chief of administration (or "mayor") of the village of Alkhan-Kala, was murdered in her yard by masked intruders late on 29 November, chechenpress.org and Russian and foreign wire services reported on 30 November. Memorial Society Human Rights Center, a Russian monitoring group with an office in Nazran, questioned reports from Russian and Chechen law enforcement agencies and pro-Kremlin media that described Umazheva's murder "as the latest act of intimidation by the bandits." They indicated that her outspoken exposure of Russian military atrocities in her village made Russian soldiers more likely the culprits.

Neighbors and other villagers interviewed by Memorial workers said that the Russian federal troops who had surrounded and searched Umazheva's home the evening of her murder were responsible for summarily executing her in her shed with three shots to the head after an illegal search of her home. Memorial said immediate relatives at first refused to talk to their monitors, criticizing both human rights activists and journalists as failing to protect Umazheva from retaliation, even as they reported on her harsh criticism of Russian mistreatment of villagers. In a report published on 2 December, "The Moscow Times" cited various hypotheses regarding Umazheva's killers. ORT said she had repeatedly been threatened by Chechen fighters despite her dissent because she was part of the pro-Moscow Chechen administration cooperating with the Russian military to pacify the region. Ekho Moskvy alternatively cited a Chechen rebel website that accused federal troops of involvement in the killing, in retaliation for her protest of a brutal sweep of her village last April. "The Moscow Times" noted she was at least the third mayor of Alkhan-Kala, just southwest of Grozny, to be killed in the past two years, according to lenta.ru.

Based on interviews with neighbors, Memorial reported on 3 December in a statement published at memo.ru that on the night of 29-30 November, four Russian military men in camouflage burst into Umazheva's home armed with snipers' rifles and silencers, shouting "Where are the Wahhabis?" Umazheva, her son, and two young nieces for whom she had cared since childhood were at home. The intruders told them to lie on the floor while they searched the house, saying they were looking for someone. The soldiers then asked Umazheva to come with them out to the shed. The girls began shouting "Don't kill Mama!" as Umazheva struggled to console them. One of the soldiers said, "I give you my word that she will return." Umazheva grabbed a flashlight and followed the soldiers out to the shed; those inside the house then heard shots ring out, and neighbors rushed to the scene to find her dead body. They also reported that her house was surrounded by soldiers, and that parked at an old factory near her yard were armored personnel carriers and a jeep. Other witnesses reported that military vehicles continued to patrol the village throughout the night.

Several days before her murder, according to her nieces, Russian soldiers had come to the house and asked Umazheva to help them identify several "Wahhabites" who had allegedly been detained in Alkhan-Kala. She refused to go along with them because in fact, she was no longer serving as mayor, having been terminated by Grozny officials on 9 September for "systematic nonperformance of official duties." Reports indicate that she was supposedly going to resume the position on 1 December -- the day after her death.

Umazheva came to the job of mayor in June 2001 from a previous position in an informal council of elders, and was nominated by the village residents themselves. She accepted the dangerous post at a difficult time when the village was repeatedly subjected to Russian searches for Chechen fighters.

The "Los Angeles Times" featured her in a story titled "Chechens Report Abuses Despite Safeguards" on 24 April, about enhanced rules known as Order No. 80, issued by a Russian commander to stop the military's own abuses such as beatings, looting, and torture, following local and international protests. "I was very hopeful about Order 80, but my hopes were short-lived," the "Los Angeles Times" quoted Umazheva, then 54, as saying. Umazheva complained that contrary to specific guidelines in the order, she and other representatives of the administration and the council of elders were not allowed to accompany soldiers on their sweep of the village. Furthermore, she was forced by soldiers to sign a statement that no human rights violations had occurred, after which the situation worsened, and two residents were shot and killed in a sweep which began on 11 April.

For her courage in standing up to the Russian military, Umazheva was also profiled by award-winning Russian war correspondent Anna Politkovskaya in a piece in "Novaya gazeta," (translated into English by the Jamestown Foundation's "Chechnya Weekly," 24 July 2002). Politkovskaya described Umazheva as "pro-Moscow" although she was ultimately barred from entering the government complex in Grozny after she kept pressing complaints about lack of follow-up on commitments for social services and reconstruction.

The "final straw," came, writes Politkovskaya, when "after the nth 'cleansing operation' had been completed, she looked directly into the eyes of General Igor Bronitskii (he has been directing all the 'cleansing operations' in recent months) and simply said, 'No!'" When a prosecutor for the North Caucasus Military Prosecutor, Aleksandr Ferlevskii, intervened to support the general and claimed no human rights were violated, although executions had taken place at "filtration points," Umazheva shouted at Ferlevskii, "You are a scoundrel!" said Politkovskaya. Next Umazheva found herself denounced on state television by General Anatolii Kvashnin, chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, who claimed $600,000 along with gold and diamonds had been found in her home, Memorial reported, citing strana.ru on 30 April. Finding the allegations absurd, Memorial researchers pressed Chechen prosecutors about the case, and received a reply on 4 September of this year that no information or evidence of the dollars and diamonds had been discovered, and that Umazheva was not detained on suspicion of any crime during 2000-02.

Earlier this year, Politkovskaya reported in "Novaya gazeta," federal forces murdered Umazheva's brother. First, they tortured him with electric shock, next they dumped him back at home in a weakened state, and then finally returned the next day in military vehicles to execute him.

Memorial workers and Russian journalists believe Umazheva's protests over the bloody April sweeps brought heavy pressure on her and her family. Soldiers riding in carriers without license plates broke into her home a number of times, said Memorial, and failed to identify themselves, and even fired a shot into the house. Then a more formal search followed by an investigator with a warrant, but Umazheva said he claimed nothing "illegal" was discovered. Reviewing her case over the last year, Memorial concluded that "the murder of Umazheva was the latest act of terror unleashed by the power ministries of the Russian Federation against the civilians of the Chechen Republic." Local police are continuing to investigate the crime.