1998 Abduction of Foreign Engineers in Chechnya - Kidnapping

Kidnapping

On the night of October 3, 1998, a well-armed group of up to 20 Chechen-speaking men captured four foreign workers from their home, located in the vicinity of the headquarters of the Chechen security team specifically tasked with fighting the plague of kidnappings in the republic. The attackers fought a brief gun battle with one of the victims' lightly armed local bodyguards (according to Chechen officials the other five bodyguards did not open fire) and one member of the gang was reportedly wounded. Nevertheless, the anti-kidnapping unit's officers did not react to the shooting, allegedly because they were not aware of the presence of the foreigners at the house, and the sound of gunfire was frequent in Grozny at night.

All the law enforcement agencies of ChRI got involved in the search for the victims. More than 60 other hostages were released as Chechen officials launched raids on the homes of suspected kidnappers, but the missing engineers were not found. During the crackdown, several suspects in the abduction were arrested, but all were later released for lack of evidence. On October 8, a spokesman for Chechnya's Security Ministry said the abductees were alive and well, but the kidnappers had not set demands or conditions for their release.

After nearly two months, at the end of November, the kidnappers contacted Granger, promising that the hostages were alive and well and demanding a ransom of 10 million dollars. The British Foreign and Commonwealth Office had already announced that it was Her Majesty's Government's policy not to pay ransoms, but Granger agreed to find the money. According to the 2005 article in Kommersant, the management of state-owned telecommunications company Chechentelekom determined that the engineers were in the hands of the rogue Chechen commander and reputed organized crime figure Arbi Barayev; during the war with Russia, Barayev abducted a group of 29 Russian engineers near Grozny and later exchanged them for a large sum of money. According to the rumors, the company even took one of Barayev's deputies hostage and proposed exchanging him for the foreigners, yet Barayev declined and continued in demanding $10m for their release.