Certainly, the disappearance of Tremino and Rodriguez caused the Georgian authorities a good deal of embarrassment at a time when Russia was poised to slap a visa regime on the former Soviet republic. Officials in Tbilisi say the Spaniards are being held in Pankisi but, in a recent interview with the Russian press, Georgian interior minister Kakha Targamadze admitted their exact whereabouts were still unknown. He went on to say that relatives of the businessmen had been attempting to strike a deal with the kidnappers and this was seriously impeding the police investigation. Goderdzi Khizanishvili, head of the investigative team, confirmed that the brothers of the two hostages arrived in Georgia for the second time on January 30 but had refused to inform the police of their activities. The brothers in turn deny any dealings with the abductors.
Information is sketchy.
Zaur Gonashvili, who was released from captivity in the Pankisi Gorge on January 12, said he had heard definite confirmation that the missing businessmen were in the region but their captors were not Chechens but members of a Kist gang. Temur Arabuli, head of the Akhmetsky police department, told IWPR that Chechen refugees had provided accurate information on the Spaniards' whereabouts and the local community as a whole resented the criminal activities of the kidnapping gangs. In December, Chechen leader Aslan Maskhadov announced that any Chechen found guilty of murder, kidnapping, robbery or rape on Georgian territory would face the death penalty. Russia continues to keep up the pressure. And Boris Nemtsov, chairman of the Union of Rightwing Forces, told a meeting of Georgian deputies that the Chechens would occupy a large slice of northern Georgia unless swift action were taken.