NZer killed to warn West off Chechnya, says BBC

New Zealander Stan Shaw and his British telephone engineer colleagues were killed in Chechnya as a warning to the West to keep out of the country, a BBC official says.

According to a BBC documentary, the four men were kidnapped and killed in 1998 by allies of terror suspect Osama bin Laden.

Terry Messenger, assistant producer of Money Programme, said today Shaw, 58, Darren Hickey, 26, Rudi Petschi, 42, and Peter Kennedy, 46, were originally kidnapped for ransom.

But he added investigators for the documentary believed bin Laden ordered the killings.

"We think bin Laden said, 'We don't want these people in Chechnya. We want to warn the West and Russia away from Chechnya.'

"We think the engineers were killed as part of the Islamic jihad in Chechnya, which wanted to rid the country of Westerners and indeed of Russians," Mr Messenger said in an interview on National Radio.

The AFP news agency reported yesterday that killers were paid more than $70 million to execute the engineers.

The severed heads of the New Zealander and the Britons were found on a roadside in Chechnya in December 1998, several months after they were kidnapped.

The agency quoted the BBC documentary as saying notorious Islamic warlord Arbi Barayev, a bin Laden ally, was thought to be responsible for the kidnaps and murders.

Barayev was killed by Russian forces six months ago.

The BBC programme said it had evidence Barayev had been negotiating with the hostages' employer, Granger Telecom, about the payment of a stg7 million ($NZ24.3 million) ransom for the release of the engineers.

However, bin Laden offered him stg21 million to kill the men.

The actual killer, a man called Khamzat, who was still at large, was believed to be another bin Laden ally.

Mr Messenger said today Money Programme has evidence linking Barayev to bin Laden's al Qaeda network.

"We have evidence Stan Shaw (and the others) was killed because Osama bin Laden paid for them to be killed, evidence not proof, but evidence the Foreign Office is investigating."

He added there were undoubted and proven links between the kidnappers and bin Laden.

"It's an absolutely appalling story, a dreadful story," Mr Messenger said.

"But the suspicion of bin Laden's involvement has deflected blame from the people who sent (the men to Chechnya) in the first place -- Granger Telecom and the Foreign Office."

He added the BBC investigators thought British diplomats might have warned the company more clearly not to send the engineers to Chechnya.

"It's a dreadful story from start to finish... these people shouldn't have lost their lives. They were let down at every turn."

- NZPA