The head of a charity and her husband have been found dead after being kidnapped by a group of armed men in Russia's restive region of Chechnya, Interfax news agency reported today.
On Monday, armed men raided the office of the Save the Generations charity in the regional capital Grozny and seized Zarema Sadulayeva and her husband Alik Dzhabrailov.
"Their bodies have been found in the Chernorechye suburb of Grozny," Interfax quoted a senior member of the Memorial rights group, Alexander Cherkasov, as saying. The report could not be immediately verified independently.
The kidnapping of Ms Sadulayeva and her husband occurred just a month after a Memorial activist, Natalia Estemirova, was kidnapped and killed in Chechnya.
Save the Generations provides medical and psychological help to young people who have suffered as a result of violence in Chechnya, including children who lost limbs during the region's two separatist wars with Russia in the 1990s.
Chechnya and neighbouring North Caucasus provinces have seen a rise in violence in the past few months, blamed by local officials on Islamic militants.
Reuters