Officers of Russias Federal Security Service, or FSB, took part in an operation to track down and save Miriam Jevikova, 28, reports Sergei Ignatchenko, FSB chief of PR. He says it is too early now to offer any details to the public.

The girl was found tied hand-and-foot in an empty house in Grozny, Chechen capital, says Evgenia Androsova, press secretary to the FSB Board for the Stavropol Territory. Secret services of the territory and Chechnya had joined hands to save Miriam, she added.

Employed with the Czech-based charity, Aid to Refugees, Miriam

Ads

Jevikova started all alone from Pyatigorsk, a spa in the Stavropol Territory, to visit friends in Ingushetia, which borders on Chechnya. That was May 26. She was missed, June 1. Miriams Ingush friends reported she had vanished as late as June 8, say Slovak media outlets.

As far as the Pyatigorsk prosecutors officers know, Miriam had a business trip to Ingushetias Nazran scheduled for June 1. She meant it to be a hitchhike. An unidentified man called the Aid to Refugees HQ in Prague, July 1 and 4, to report a Slovak national in Chechnya. He said she had been kidnapped, and demanded a million dollar ransom, the prosecutors men said to Novosti soon after the sinister phone calls.

Augustin Cisara, Slovak Ambassador to Russia, appealed to the host countrys authorities to help his compatriot in her plight, Russias Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on a previous occasion.

MOSCOW/ROSTOV-ON-DON, November 24 (RIA Novosti)