Black Sea Hostage Crisis - Aftermath

Aftermath

On March 7, 1997, the hijackers were sentenced to more than eight years in prison. Abdurrahmanov escaped on October 4 from the State Hospital in Bursa. On October 21, Zubaroyev, Gitsba and Özkan also escaped from prison. Gitsba had later been reportedly shot dead coming out of a mosque in Gudauta, Abkhazia, on August 17, 2007.

The leader of the militants, Muhammed Tokcan, escaped from the prison in Dalaman on October 6, 1997. Tokcan was arrested again at Atatürk Airport in Istanbul on April 29, 1999, as he tried to flee to Sochi under a false passport. He was paroled on December 22, 2000. On April 22, 2001, just before midnight, a group of 12 militants led by Tokcan (who was still on parole), seized the Swissôtel in Istanbul and took hostages to draw international attention to the new war in Chechnya. The crisis ended when all gunmen surrendered after just 12 hours, again without bloodshed.

Erdinç Tekir had been an İHH employee for two years following a decade of volunteering for the organization. Tekir was aboard the MV Mavi Marmara as a member of İHH during the Gaza flotilla raid, wounded by the IDF boarding party. Tekir told Hürriyet that the group that hijacked the ferryboat and the Israelis who boarded the Mavi Marmara were both pirates, however they were the pirates of goodness, whereas Israel was cruel.