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Posted on 11/21/2001 1:36:58 PM PST by kattracks

LONDON (Reuters) - Saudi-born militant Osama bin Laden paid $30 million to have four Western hostages beheaded in Chechnya three years ago, the British Broadcasting Corporation reported Wednesday.

The BBC's Money Program said the man suspected of masterminding September's attacks in the United States, paid the blood money to Chechen warlord, Arbi Barayev, who dealt with bin Laden through an Arab called Kattab.

The BBC said Kattab had been paid millions of dollars by bin Laden to start an Islamic revolution in the former Soviet Republic.

Barayev snatched the engineers who had been installing a telephone system in the Chechen capital Grozny in October 1998, the BBC said.

The severed heads of New Zealander Stanley Shaw and Britons Darren Hickey, Rudolf Petschi and Peter Kennedy were found on Dec. 8 on a Chechen highway. Their bodies were recovered a few weeks later.

A British inquest into the murders said the men had been starved and beaten before having their heads sawed off with a large knife.

Chechnya won de facto independence from Russia after a 1994-96 war with Moscow. But kidnapping for ransom turned into a lucrative business in the breakaway region, awash with arms, devastated by war and in the grip of feuding warlords.

The Money Program said it had uncovered bin Laden's involvement by tracking down another Barayev hostage, Abdurakhman Adukhov, who was held with the engineers and later released.

He told the BBC that he had spoken with Barayev and asked him why he had killed the Westerners.

The program cited Adukhov as saying bin Laden had offered $30 million, whereas the ransom to return the men was only $10 million.

"According to Barayev, his Islamic faction would be paid more money if they murdered the men rather than freed them. The money would come from Arab friends," the BBC said.

"It seems the money ... may have been part of a wider package to spread Islamic fundamentalism in the region so that Westerners would be scared away. Bin Laden and his allies would be given a freer hand," the program added.

The BBC interviewed another man kidnapped by the gang, Shak Sharukhanov, who confirmed the decision to murder the Granger Telecom employees was made while ransom negotiations were still in progress.

A Foreign Office spokesman said similar allegations had been raised in a Russian newspaper article in October, adding that the Foreign Office was in contact with Russian authorities but had uncovered nothing to support the allegations.

Copyright © 2001 Reuters Limited.

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