Russian Aviators Escape Their Afghan Captors

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — A seven-member Russian air crew, held by rebels in Afghanistan for a year, escaped in their own plane to the United Arab Emirates. Officials said they brought three of their former captors with them.

The crew escaped Friday under the pretense of carrying out regular maintenance work on their cargo plane.

Once on the plane, the crew overpowered three guards from Afghanistan’s Taliban movement, a hard-line Islamic guerrilla group that had been holding them hostage since August 1995, said an official from Trans Avia, the Emirates-based company that had leased the cargo plane.

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the Russian crew had been questioned and released by police in the Emirates, while the three Taliban guards remained in custody.

The Russian crew will be taken home aboard a special flight from Russia due to arrive today, Russia’s Itar-Tass news agency reported. It said Russian Deputy Prime Minister Vitaly I. Ignatenko and a team of medics would be aboard the flight.

At the time of their capture, the pilots were working for Aerostan, an airline based in the Russian republic of Tatarstan. The plane was on lease to Trans Avia.

Russian officials had conducted unsuccessful negotiations in a bid to win the release of the crew members from the Taliban, which is battling the Afghan government.

Soviet troops propped up a Communist government in Afghanistan from 1979 until they withdrew in 1989. The Islamic factions in Afghanistan toppled the Communist government in 1992 but have since battled among themselves, destroying the capital, Kabul, and leaving much of the country in ruins.