-Caveat Lector- Wave of Abductions Sweeps Russia By JUDITH INGRAM .c The Associated Press MOSCOW (AP) - The flashlight crawls along a wall, then fastens on two eyes. One is swollen, surrounded by yellow bruising, hardly able to open. The other has a circular wound at the outside corner, tailing a trickle of dried blood to the corner of the mouth. The light pulls back to catch the whole terrified face, then jumps to the hands squeezed into a pair of metal cuffs. ``Mama, help me,'' the young man pleads in a near-whisper to the video camera. ``This is the last time. They need the money. Get me out.'' He is a Russian military officer, one of the hundreds of pawns in a brisk human trade in and around Chechnya. Soldiers and civilians, Russians and foreigners, old men and little girls as young as 3 have been kidnapped and held for ransom in the breakaway southern region over the past several years. Graphic videos often replace ransom notes. The asking price for a soldier is a few thousand dollars, for a foreigner several million. And while Russian law enforcement authorities usually insist that ransom was not paid to free a hostage, deals are clearly being made. Otherwise, why would the kidnapping business continue to prosper? ``It's a Catch 22: As soon as one is released, another is kidnapped,'' said Vincent Cochetel, a French U.N. refugee agency official who was held captive in Chechnya for 317 days before being released in December. ``In order to get someone released, you have to offer something.'' There is a long tradition of kidnapping in the North Caucasus, but abductions accelerated during Russia's 20-month war with Chechnya, which ended in 1996 with an agreement to put off for five years a decision on whether the region would gain independence. Russian soldiers were abducted and used as slave labor. After the war, the kidnappers stretched their nets even wider, capturing journalists, foreign aid workers and ordinary Russian citizens from regions surrounding Chechnya. According to Russia's Interior Ministry, 1,094 people were abducted in and around Chechnya between Jan. 1, 1997 and June 30. The true number is higher, because the ministry does not track kidnapped Chechens - who according to some estimates number in the hundreds. Nor are all other kidnappings recorded, especially those of civilians from neighboring Russian regions such as Dagestan. When Dagestani journalist Nabi Abdulayev's cousin was kidnapped while visiting his father in the Chechen capital, Grozny, in October 1997, local police didn't even open a criminal case. Chechen officials didn't help either, because the family couldn't afford the $50,000 they demanded to take the risk of freeing the cousin, Rashid Aliyev. The family was left to negotiate on its own with the kidnappers, through a neighbor of the father's who served as mediator. He reported that the kidnappers wanted $80,000 or they would start cutting Aliyev apart - first his fingers, then his eyes and ears. The family took up a collection from relatives across Russia. In the end, they could come up with only $30,000, but that was enough to satisfy the kidnappers. They released Aliyev from the earthen pit where he'd been held for 80 days. He'd lost 66 pounds. ``This is a common story for us in Dagestan,'' Abdulayev said. ``When private people are kidnapped, usually the family has no choice but to pay.'' For the field commanders who control large swaths of Chechnya, kidnapping has become the main means of financing arsenals and armies. For their neighbors, it's one of the few ways of earning money in the war-shattered region. ``It's a whole industry there. One searches for a target, then brings in someone to carry out the abduction, someone to figure out where the captive will live, another to feed him, another to guard him,'' said Valentin Vlasov, President Boris Yeltsin's envoy to Chechnya. He was abducted in May 1998 as he was being driven along a major highway in Chechnya. Vlasov's case came to symbolize Russia's powerlessness to combat kidnapping in the Caucasus. Once the hostage is inside Chechnya, he is out of reach of Russian police. Victims are often chained in a series of cells, basements and underground chambers, and subsist mostly on bread. The kidnappers usually wear masks, and beatings and other brutal treatment are the norm. ``Psychologically, you have to think through everything - when you sit, when you stand, when you speak, the tone of voice - so that you don't provoke the other side,'' Vlasov said. Vlasov was held for more than six months before being set free. He does not know the terms of his liberation - and seems not to want to know, either. ``If they said no ransom was paid, I'll believe that,'' he said. But there are other exchanges to be made - including Chechen inmates in Russian prisons, whom authorities sometimes arrange to have traded for hostages. Chechen families sometimes buy hostages from kidnappers to try to trade for their relatives in Russian jails. Alexander Mukomolov, the deputy director of Alexander Lebed's Peacekeeping Mission in the Caucasus, said his group never pays ransoms - though it has reimbursed Chechen families for money spent to win hostages freedom. It relies on the respect won by Lebed, the former Russian army general who negotiated the end of the Chechen war, as the guarantee for hostage-freeing deals. And it does sometimes honor special requests. ``For example, if the mother or father or grandfather of a (kidnapper) needs an operation here, we'll arrange that,'' Mukomolov said. Russia's Interior Ministry would have to get Chechen officials' clearance to storm kidnappers' lairs in Chechnya, and the Chechens are hardly interested in having Russian police on their territory. To attempt clandestine operations could land Russia back in a war. That leaves the responsibility for police operations to Chechen political leaders, and they are weak and under-equipped compared with the field commanders. Some also allegedly have a material interest in the kidnapping business. ``Everybody knew who was detaining me, and where, for 10 months. Chechen people knew. If they had wanted to release me, they could have,'' Cochetel, the French hostage, said. DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance�not soapboxing! 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