HOSTAGE APPEAL IS POSTED

The website Grani.ru has published a digital video received by e-mail from rebel guerrillas who are holding a civilian employee of the Kadyrov administration as a hostage. Nadezhda Pogosovaya, an aide to the head of the republican procuracy, was seized by an unidentified rebel group in December of 2002 together with Aleksei Klimov, an official of the procuracy’s inter-district office for the Shatoi area in southern Chechnya.

Pogosovaya says in the video that several other people are being held captive with her, including some who are wounded or ill and who urgently need medical attention. She reiterates a proposal from her captors to exchange her and her fellow hostages for Chechens now being held by the federal forces, and claims that so far this proposal has not been answered.