Chechnya - Kidnapping

Kidnapping here is not pretty. Well-known aid maestro Fred Cuny is executed, and even his decomposed body is being ransomed for $200,000 to the Soros Foundation; Red Cross workers were shot point-blank in the head with silenced weapons; phone workers were kidnapped and then found decapitated; kidnappers send videos of victims' fingers and ears being sliced off to speed up payments. Things are ugly in Chechnya. The problem is that most of the kidnapping is done by Russians. Russians sell back dead Chechen fighters, split ransoms with their victims, snatch journos from Ingushetia, Georgia and Dagestan and then keep them in safehoues inside Chechnya. There is even a wholesale business as victims are swapped like baseball cards.

So far about 1200 people have been officially kidnapped since 1994. The Economist figures Chechen warlords made $8 million from ransoms in a year. Some say $20 million. It seems that the film Prisoner of the Mountain has turned into an infomercial.