1998 abduction of foreign engineers in Chechnya

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 in Grozny, 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.[9][10] 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.[11][12]

All the law enforcement agencies of the 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.[13] During the crackdown, several suspects in the abduction were arrested, but all were later released for lack of evidence.[14] 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.[15]

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.[16] 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.[14]

On December 8, the abductees' heads were found in a sack on the side of a highway in the Chechen village of Assinovskaya, close to the border with the Russian republic of Ingushetia, and were soon identified by one of the victims' bodyguards.[17] In a press conference on December 10, Chechnya's vice-president, Vakha Arsanov, showed a recovered video tape in which the kidnappers forced the four to dress in military uniforms and confess in Russian to spying for "German, English and Israeli special services" and the CIA. According to Chechen security forces, the hostages were executed at an unused factory south of Grozny after a rescue operation that went wrong; it was suggested that their death was a show of defiance to the authorities from the kidnappers. Family members said the abortive rescue attempt "ruined delicate negotiations" that were going on between Granger and the kidnappers, and also criticized an unnamed news agency that had given out details of where the hostages were being held shortly before the operation.[18]

On December 29, the Chechen officials found the four victims' headless corpses on the outskirts of Grozny, reportedly after paying $2,000 a piece for the return of the bodies.[14] That same day, the remains of the engineers were transported by Chechen Deputy Prime Minister Turpal-Ali Atgeriyev to Russian republic of Dagestan and flown through Azerbaijan to Gatwick Airport near London.[19] According to the inquest by the Westminster Coroner's Court, the kidnapped men were starved of food and water, and had been repeatedly struck with rifle butts before being decapitated with a large knife. Examination of the bodies showed all the men had been extremely malnourished and Rudi Petschi had suffered particularly severe injuries.[13]

• United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan said he was "shocked" by the murder.[3]
• According his spokesman, President of Russia Boris Yeltsin was "deeply disturbed".[3]
• President of Ichkeria Aslan Maskhadov said he was "saddened and angered".[20] He also announced a national crackdown on kidnappers and called for mobilisation of war veterans to fight the organized crime.[21]
• The British Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, described the murders as "repugnant" and pledged to discover exactly what led to the tragedy.[3] Paul Keetch, the MP for the constituency where victim Peter Kennedy lived, has blamed the Chechen security forces for bungling a rescue attempt.[22]

At the time of the abduction many of the region's warlords were in open revolt against the ChRI government of Maskhadov, and several analysts interpreted the abductions as a political act.[11] Maskhadov himself blamed the atrocity on the "foreign special services" and their Chechen henchmen,[20] hinting at a possible involvement of Russian special services using Chechen "bandits" to destabilise the breakaway territory.[3] A similar opinion was voiced later by the Chechen commander Ruslan Gelayev, who in an interview for the BBC said that the act was provocation organized by "men trained by the Russian special services" as a part of an alleged plot to turn the public opinion of neighboring nations and the world against Chechnya.[23] The British investigation at the time surmised that the four were the victims of "warring mercenary factions."[24]

In April 2002, the British government was forced to apologize to the widow of Rudi Petschi, over the way her husband's kidnap and murder had been handled.[42] In June 2003, the families of three hostages sued for more than £1m in compensation from their former employers.[24]

• List of kidnappings
• List of solved missing person cases
• List of unsolved murders