12:28, 9 June 2004

Kidnapping suspect arrested in Ingushetia

42-year-old Tukhan Elsayev, a member of a gang involved in a number of murders and kidnappings, was arrested in the town of Nazran in Ingushetia on June 6, a source in the regional headquarters on the counter-terrorist operation in the North Caucasus told the Caucasian Knot correspondent on June 8. According to the source, who asked not to name him, Elsayev is also accused of complicity in the March 1999 kidnapping of Gennady Shpigun, the Russian Interior Ministry's envoy in Chechnya.

Officers of Russian security agencies arrested Elsayev on the central market of Nazran on June 6. Tukhan Elsayev, a native of the village of Katyr-Yurt, Chechnya's Achkhoy-Martan district, came to Ingushetia in the very begging of hostilities in Chechnya in 1999. He has rented a private house here together with his wife and earned by trading on the local market.

Author: Malika Suleymanova, CK correspondent

Source: Caucasian Knot