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Hostage Release Costs $2 Mln in Chechnya
The Erkel Case
The last witness has been examined in the Netherlands vs. Medecins Sans Frontiers case at Geneva’s court. The Netherlands wants to get back ˆ1 million, paid to secure the release of Arjan Erkel, the head of the Medecins Sans Frontiers’ mission. The Dutch citizen was abducted in Makhachkala in 2002 and spent 20 months in captivity. UN representative Vincent Cochetel said the authorities had ransomed all hostages in the North Caucasus but he happened to be the only one who had been released in a special operation.
UN High Commissioner for Refugees Vincent Cochetel worked in Grozny and was kidnapped in 1998, spending 317 days in captivity. Answering the judges’ questions, Mr. Cochetel said he knew the hostages had always been ransomed in the North Caucasus. Only one hostage has been released in a special operation, and it was actually Mr. Cochetel himself.
“One day, a door in my cellar opened,” he recounted. “They let me out. It was dark outside. They handcuffed me and put into a car. Some time later, we walked across the border between Ingushetia and Chechnya. Then, they put a mask on me and made me lie on the floor of another car. We were driving through the virgin lands when the car stopped and I heard shots and the glass cracking. I felt something splash on me. It was blood – I was wounded. A man sitting on my left rushed outside and was killed right away. I crawled out of the car from the other side and hid behind the wheel. That was when I saw military men in camouflage. There were some 15-20 of them, including Vladimir Rushailo [Russia’s Interior Minister at that time]. I could not even shake his hand because the soldiers did not have the key to take the handcuffs off.”
“Who organized your release?” the judge asked. Mr. Cochetel explained that the UN Refugee Agency had no funds for it, and the agency could only put pressure “on public, appealing to Russian and French authorities, reminding them of the responsibility for international employees.” French officials took actions immediately. “A contact was established with President Boris Yeltsin and with security agencies,” Mr. Cochetel said. “A communication service officer was sent to the French Embassy in Moscow to keep in touch with the Russian authorities in charge.” Vincent Cochetel commented on Mr. Erkel's abduction in the following way: “Russian and Dagestani authorities wasted too much time due to unknown reasons.”
The lawyer of the Netherlands asked the witness if he knows who pays for hostages’ releases. “As far as I know, the hostages have been ransomed in the North Caucasus by a private businessman rather than by officials only once,” Mr. Cochetel responded. The UN employee said that the freedom of two British citizens was secured by “a Russian businessman who now works in Britain and probably hoped for some tax reliefs or any other benefits.” Vincent Cochetel told Kommersant after the sitting of the court that he had meant Boris Berezovsky.
Abductions of international organizations’ employees were a common practice in Chechnya in the 1990s, according to Mr. Cochetel. “Some two dozens of overseas citizens were kidnapped in Chechnya between 1995 and 1999,” he noted. “Everybody realized then that there were no tools to influence the kidnappers, so people had to pay for the information, for establishing contacts, for the evidence that the hostage was alive and, ultimately, they had to pay ransom. As for me, $30,000 was paid for a cassette with 20 photo shots of mine.” Mr. Cochetel said that usually about $150-200,000 was paid to set foreign hostages free. Kidnappers put forward different demands but they were “more financial than political.”
Abduction practices changed after the end of the first Chechen war. Foreign companies which operated in Chechnya, especially in the oil business, started insuring their employees against kidnapping. If these problems occur, they would be solved quickly. After the second Chechen war when few foreigners stayed in the North Caucasus, prices for the hostages’ release soared. “It now costs about $1 – 2 million,” Vincent Cochetel estimated.
Asked about chances of catching kidnappers, Mr. Cochetel replied: “I was lucky. Ossetian authorities arrested a few perpetrators of my abduction within four years. They were later sentenced to 15 years in prison, but masterminders were never found.”
The examination of witnesses of the two parties finished. The ruling on the case will be passed after lawyers for Medecins Sans Frontiers and for the Netherlands give their speeches in June.
Igor Sedykh, Geneva
All the Article in Russian as of May 05, 2006
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