Author : Fady Asly
As I was heading to Tashkent airport, my phone rang. It was Imad Bekai, our sales manager.
- Mr. Fady, I have bad news, Charbel was kidnapped from the warehouse an hour ago!
- Crap, I said! Anyone hurt?
- No, he was alone in his Niva driving into the warehouse when a car with three people carrying machine guns cut him off, broke the car window, pulled him out and drove away very fast.
- OK Imad, call Achico our lawyer, brief him of the facts and head immediately to the police station with him to file an official report. I am in Tashkent on my way to Baku then Tbilisi, I should get there around midnight.
Charbel my deputy, a handsome man in his mid-thirties, cool, relaxed and tanned, sporting a ponytail, and a father of two cute little girls! What a responsibility on my shoulders I thought! Besides dealing with the government, I will have to deal with a totally emotional and panicked family - the worst liability possible in those circumstances.
I called my partner Fady Nahas in Istanbul and briefed him of the developments, and we both agreed that the most rational thing would be to keep the family away from Georgia so as not to complicate the situation on the ground.
My first visit next morning was to Philip Remler, Charge d’Affaires of the US embassy in Georgia, to tell him what had happened; my suspicion was that this must have been masterminded by one of our competitors with the help of law enforcement.
The police had informed us that the kidnappers would surely make contact to demand a ransom and we waited...
Days passed without news from Charbel; I had requested Dunia, Charbel’s wife, to leave Georgia to avoid any threat on her life and on the lives of her children and to avoid the kidnappers contacting her instead of contacting us, which would have complicated things further.
In addition, having a panicked and distressed wife calling every five minutes was seriously counterproductive.
My partner Fadi hosted the family in an Istanbul hotel on full board for weeks and the agreement was that they were not allowed to come to Georgia.
We knew that with the family in Georgia, the kidnappers would have more leverage to play with their emotions and exert pressure on us.
One thing I had decided on irrevocably was that no matter the amount of the ransom, I would not pay it; if you pay a ransom once you will pay a ransom every day and considering that our company was operating in several countries of the region, paying a ransom would be a clear invitation for more kidnappings.
Weeks passed and still no news, then a month later Imad called me.
- They have called, they have called, he said.
- And?
- They have requested 500,000 dollars and have given us 48 hours to respond. They will call me back in 48 hours! What should I say?
- You will tell them that Fady Asly will pay you 1,000 dollars and that’s it! You will tell them that Charbel’s monthly food allowance is 1,000 dollars and since they have been feeding him for a month I am happy to send them this allowance!
- How can I tell them this? They will kill him!
- Calm down, they will not kill him; they didn’t feed him for a month and take all those risks just to kill him upon the first phone call.
Two days later the same kidnapper called and when Imad told him the answer he went nuts on the phone and started insulting Imad and insulting me and shouting death threats, then silence....
A few days later, I was relaxing by the Sheraton pool in the afternoon when my mobile rang. It was an officer from the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
- Mr. Asly, I need to talk to you about an issue. When can we meet?
- Sure, where are you now?
- At the ministry, but I don’t want to meet you here.
- Fine, then come to the Sheraton.
- OK, I will be there in thirty minutes.
A chubby man in his forties approached my table. Mr. Fady, I am Gia who just called you.
- Welcome Gia, please have a seat. What would you like to drink?
- Nothing at all, thank you.
- So what’s up?
- Mr. Fady, I had to talk to you regarding the kidnapping of your deputy.
- You have news?
It is not that I have news, we know who did it, we know where he is but the matter is blocked at the highest level at the ministry.
- You mean by the Minister?
- I cannot tell you by whom, all that I can advise you to do is to move it from above the Minister.
- Thank you Gia for your help. I greatly appreciate it.
Gia left, leaving me alone with my thoughts and many questions.
Why would an official from the Ministry of Interior, whom | had never met before, volunteer such information?
Why is the Ministry concealing that they know the whereabouts of Charbel?
Is the Minister personally involved in the kidnapping?
The one thing that became obvious to me was that state structures were definitely involved in the kidnapping and covering it up and I became really very angry! I thought to myself, you want to fuck with me? I will fuck with you!
l immediately called Gia Alikhanashvili, CEO of McCann Erikson, the advertising company, and asked him to meet me at our offices at ten the next morning.
- Gia, how many billboards are there in Tbilisi?
- I guess about 150 or 200.
- I want them all!
- All? Are you planning some mega campaign? Some of them are booked for a long time!
- Yes I am, just book as many as you can!
- OK, but booking all those billboards might cost in the region of 100,000 dollars.
- I don’t care, just negotiate the best price for me.
- What are you advertising?
- Charbel!
- Charbel?
Yes, Charbel! I want a picture of Charbel on each and every billboard in Tbilisi and I want the caption on the picture to say just one thing: Kidnapped June 7, 2001.
And so it happened, ten days later all the billboards in Tbilisi featured Charbel’s picture like a movie star, with the caption: Kidnapped June 7, 2001 in both English and Georgian.
Two billboards greeted travelers at Tbilisi airport and bid them farewell, we had billboards in front of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, billboards facing the Prosecutor’s office,billboards along Shevardnadze’s route to and from his residence, billboards everywhere.
The power of those billboards was that they kept me fully mobilized, since every time I drove through Tbilisi I would see one of them and would get very angry thinking to myself,| will fuck your mothers, you don’t want me to do business here? Great! Then no one else will do business here either!
Sometime in July while I was at the office I was surprised by a visit from Charbel’s father and wife who, despite our request, had decided to fly to Tbilisi.
His father started shouting that I was doing nothing to free his son.
I told him that, first of all, we had an agreement that the family would remain in Istanbul, secondly they would screw things up here if the kidnappers learned that they were in Georgia, thirdly, if they wanted to handle the negotiations themselves then fair enough, but in this case I wanted nothing further to do with the matter.
Charbel’s father and wife made a huge fuss. I asked them to leave the office and they refused, so I called the police and had them evicted.
I understood their distress and I was very sorry for them,but still I knew perfectly well how counter-productive their presence would be in Georgia and that they would harm Charbel much more than help him.
Charbel’s brother called me hours later totally out of his mind, cursing me and insulting me for evicting his parents.
One of the people I visited regularly regarding the kidnapping was Soso Alavidze, the colorful Chief of Tbilisi Police; Soso was a very influential figure, a handsome man, always dressed up in designer clothes, with a collection of Rolex wristwatches and sexy German cars. Soso owned a huge mansion on what is called “Corruption Hill” in Tbilisi; people were claiming that he was corrupt, but for me, he was a charming person, very charismatic and very straightforward.
Soso would brief me on developments, or rather the lack of developments, and we always kept on very friendly terms.
About a month after the billboards were displayed I visited Kakha Imnadze, the Press Secretary of President Shevardnadze.
Kakha was a young man in his early thirties, blond with smart eyes, western-educated, a native English speaker. In short he was an island of the West in an ocean of the East.
- Kakha, | said, it’s been almost two months since my deputy was kidnapped and there is still no action from the government. | was told by someone from the Ministry of Internal Affairs that they know who kidnapped him, they nknow his whereabouts but they are doing nothing to release him! Someone is blocking it!
- Fady, it is a very difficult situation at the Ministry. Listen my friend, ask Philip Remler the US Charge d’ Affaires to meet me and I will advise him how to proceed.
I met Philip the same day and briefed him of my conversation; Philip scheduled a meeting with Kakha the next day and was advised to bring the matter to Nugzar Sajaia, Secretary General of the Security Council, a powerful and influential man very close to President Shevardnadze.
Kakha told Philip that the only person who could scare Targamadze, the Minister of Internal Affairs, would be Nugzar Sajaia.
Philip visited Sajaia and discussed the matter with him and Sajaia promised that he would take immediate action.
On August 19th, Soso Alavidze called me and asked me to visit him urgently; when I got to the office that I had already visited so many times, with those exotic fish swimming peacefully around their giant aquarium, Soso was pacing the room feverishly.
- Fady, he said, keep it to yourself, but I am resigning totorrow and Charbel will be freed a couple of days later as soon as my successor is appointed; they want you to think that | was the one blocking his release and that I was dismissed for that.
Indeed, Soso resigned the next day on August 20 and Kakha Bakuradze was appointed Chief of Tbilisi Police.
| heard the phone ring in my dream and then I realized l wasn’t a dream! My mobile was ringing at five in the morning , I picked up and it was Dato the head of my security on the line.
-Congratulations sir! Charbel is released!
This was August 24th, my security detail were already in the yard waiting for me to drive to the hospital where Charbel was sent once he had been “freed” 77 days after he was kidnapped.
Charbel was being thoroughly examined by the doctor and I was shocked when I saw him! He had lost twenty kilos and had a huge black beard; he looked like those savages in the movies.
He ran to me, hugged me, and couldn’t stop crying. He was emotionally and physically drained!
I was surprised to see Kakha Targamadze at the hospital. I didn’t greet him, thank him or even acknowledge his presence; I still have very strong suspicions that he was directly involved in the kidnapping.
Charbel had been kept chained to a bed for 77 days, blindfolded with a leather mask very similar to the one in the movie “The Man with the Iron Mask”.
He hadn’t been allowed to shower for the whole period of his captivity, he had to eat and go to the toilet while chained to his bed.
He was kept in an apartment next to the airport road and was removed from the apartment and placed on the last day in some abandoned construction site out of Tbilisi where the police staged the scenario of his “liberation” through a special operation.
The interesting thing is that while we were negotiating with the kidnappers and informing them that we would pay no ransom, Charbel was telling them exactly the same story.
- I know my boss very well, he will never bow to pressure and will never pay my ransom. The best that you can hope for are a few thousand dollars gathered by my colleagues at work; you’d be better off killing me and not wasting your time.
Fortunately, he was freed and the tactics of the very unconventional billboards made the headlines in the New York Times.
A few days later Charbel flew to Lebanon for a rest and never came back to Georgia; his brother called me shortly afterwards to apologize for insulting me on the phone and thanked me for getting back Charbel alive.
