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Pastimes : Kosovo -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: the gator who wrote (13226)	7/1/1999 7:26:00 PM
From: goldsnow	Respond to of 17770

Other butchers? In Chechnya, kidnapping is an industry Copyright © 1999 Nando Media Copyright © 1999 Reuters News Service MOSCOW, June 30 (June 29, 1999 7:29 p.m. EDT nandotimes.com) - A man in the video holds a hand over the prisoner's mouth and lifts the prisoner's arm. Another man begins sawing at a finger with a hunter's knife. Seconds later, the finger drops to the floor. The man with the knife picks up the white finger and shows it to the camera. He holds it next to the hand's fresh knuckle stump, then tosses it back to the ground and pats his victim on the top of the head, mussing up his hair. The captive hunches over, seated cross-legged in socks on the blood-splattered floor, rocking slowly and silently. Back and forth, back and forth. Chechen gangsters have held hundreds of Russians and at least two dozen foreigners for ransom since the end of a war for independence from Moscow. Many victims have been killed. Some have been mutilated. Survivors have said they were tortured, starved, bought and sold, worked as slaves, raped. But the ransom video for Herbert Gregg, an American missionary kidnapped in a neighboring region seven months ago, was by far the most visceral image to reach the outside world of the terror of a hostage epidemic that Russian and Chechen officials have been powerless to stop. The video was released Tuesday by Russia's Interior Ministry, which said security forces had freed Gregg and no ransom was paid, but gave no further details of the operation. Earlier in June, Interior Minister Vladimir Rushailo said as many as 800 captives may still be in Chechen hands. Chechen fighters fought fiercely and effectively against Moscow in the 1994-96 war. Although Russia has never accepted the region's claim to independence, Moscow was forced to withdraw its troops to secure a peace. But the fighting, in which tens of thousands of civilians were killed, left most of Chechnya in ruins, a lawless semi-state plagued by heavily armed gangs of former guerrillas turned bandits. Kidnapping for money has become the region's only growth industry. Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov, a soft-spoken moderate who won the support of his people when commanding their guerrilla forces during the war, has vowed to stop it. But he has had no success against armed groups often commanded by charismatic warlords with devoted clan-based followings. Gregg's captors were using his videotaped mutilation to press their demands for cash. "This is Herbert Gregg, an American. April 12," he says in the video, his hand freshly bandaged. "My situation, you can see, is very very serious. Today they cut off a finger...The situation is that, without money, a finger will go, each time, over certain periods. "The situation is very, very serious." By PETER GRAFF nando.net