Black Sea hostage crisis The Black Sea hostage crisis took place January 16 – 19 , 1996 on the Black Sea during the First Chechen War . The Panamanian - registered ferry " Avrasaya " with 177 passengers and 55 crew members on board was hijacked in a Turkish port of Trabzon by an international armed group , which threatened to kill the more than 100 Russia n passengers unless the Russian forces ceased its attack against the Chechen separatists in the Kizlyar - Pervomayskoye hostage crisis . The crisis ended without bloodshed after three days with the safe release of more than 219 unharmed captives ; 13 people were hospitalized because of illness and injuries . Hijacking . The hijackers were five Turkish nationals of Caucasian origin , Muhammed Emin Tokcan ( b . 1969 in Gebze ) , Tuncer Özcan ( b . 1968 in Düzce ) , Sedat Temiz , Erdinç Tekir ( b . 1966 in Istanbul ) , Ertan Coşkun ( b . 1960 in Zonguldak ) , Ceyhan Mollamehmetoğlu , an ethnic Abkhaz from Abkhazia , Khamzat Gitsba ( b . 1971 ) , and two Chechens , Ramazan Zubareyev ( b . 1963 ) and Viskhan Abdurrahmanov ( b . 1967 ) . The group took over the ship as it was about to depart from the Turkish port of Trebizond en route to Eregli and then to Sochi in Russia . The port security supervisor was shot in the foot during the hijacking and the route was changed to Istanbul . The hijackers announced they were planning the destruction of the ship in order to draw attention to Chechnya ' s plight . They also threatened to blow it up together with the 114 Russian hostages if the Russian forces did not halt their ongoing offensive operation against a large group of Chechen fighters led by Salman Raduyev , surrounded with about 200 civilian and police hostages in the village of Pervomayskoye at the border between Chechnya and the Russian republic of Dagestan . Dozens of people were killed when the Russian FSB and military attempted to storm and then shelled Pervomayskoye ; on the night ( before dawn ) of January 18 the Chechens fought their way through the Russian encirclement in a bloody breakout . The Turkish authorities , ignoring Russian demands that they act more forcefully , avoided further bloodshed and liberated all hostages through constant communication and negotiations with the captors . The ship arrived at the northern entrance to the Bosphorus on January 19 , 1996 , at around 12 : 00 hours , after the end to the fighting at Pervomayskoye . At 17 : 00 hours the same day , four of the militants surrendered to the authorities after throwing their weapons and bombs into the sea . The remaining members of the group tried to hide amongst the passengers without success . Aftermath . On March 7 , 1997 , the hijackers were sentenced to more than eight years in prison . Abdurrahmanov escaped on October 4 from the State Hospital in Bursa . On October 21 , Zubaroyev , Gitsba and Özkan also escaped from prison . Gitsba had later been reportedly shot dead coming out of a mosque in Gudauta , Abkhazia , on August 17 , 2007 . The leader of the militants , Muhammed Tokcan , escaped from the prison in Dalaman on October 6 , 1997 . Tokcan was arrested again at Atatürk Airport in Istanbul on April 29 , 1999 , as he tried to flee to Sochi under a false passport . He was paroled on December 22 , 2000 . On April 22 , 2001 , just before midnight , a group of 12 militants led by Tokcan ( who was still on parole ) , seized the Swissôtel in Istanbul and took hostages to draw international attention to the new war in Chechnya . The crisis ended when all gunmen surrendered after just 12 hours , again without bloodshed . Erdinç Tekir had been an İHH employee for two years following a decade of volunteering for the organization . Tekir was aboard the MV Mavi Marmara as a member of İHH during the Gaza flotilla raid , wounded by the IDF boarding party . Tekir told Hürriyet that the group that hijacked the ferryboat and the Israelis who boarded the Mavi Marmara were both pirates , however they were the pirates of goodness , whereas Israel was cruel .