Moscow

Danger zone: this science base on the Abramov glacier, at 4,000-metres altitude in the Pamir mountains of Kyrgyzstan, was burned by terrorists in September. The base was set up in the former Soviet republic by the Central Asia Hydrometeorological Institute more than 30 years ago. Credit: INFORMNAUKA

The Polish government last week rejected demands from Chechen kidnappers for $1 million each for the release of two Polish scientists taken captive in August in Dagestan, one of the Russian North Caucasian republics bordering Chechnia.

Zofia Fiszer-Malanowska of the Warsaw Ecology Institute of the Polish Academy of Sciences, and Ewa Marchwinska-Wyrwal of the Ecology Institute of Katowice, had travelled to Dagestan at the invitation of Rasul Magomedov of the Biological Resources Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Makhachkala, the capital of Dagestan.

The two ecologists arrived at the beginning of August and stayed at Magomedov's house. Soon all of them, together with Aleksander Karamasov, another Dagestanian scientist, moved to the Gunib region for ecological research. After the expedition failed to return at the expected time, the police started an investigation, but found only the car the scientists had used.

In September, relatives of Magomedov managed to negotiate his release. But his colleagues were left in captivity. A handwritten note from the hostages was planted on the Polish embassy in Moscow last week. In the note, the hostages ask for help because of their deteriorating health (both women are approaching 60). They are being held in a concrete cellar in Urus-Martan, Chechnia.

“We have no other information about our two citizens except that both are alive,” says a spokesman for the embassy. The Polish authorities declared that they will not pay the ransom. A Polish diplomat plans to visit Georgia in a bid to negotiate for the release of the women.

Kidnapping appears to have become an increasing hazard for researchers working in the former Soviet Union, where the activity has become an important source of income for dissident groups.