American Held in Chechnya Is Freed

A U.S. humanitarian aid worker kidnapped 27 days ago under mysterious circumstances in Chechnya turned up in apparent good health Sunday at a Russian military base near the separatist republic’s capital, after what officials described as a Federal Security Service operation to win his freedom.

However, the scant details offered about the release of Kenneth Gluck only added to questions surrounding the case of the American seized by masked gunmen in a military-style operation Jan. 9.

Gluck spoke with notable caution when interviewed Sunday on Russia’s NTV network. He revealed that he had not been ill-treated but offered no information about his captors or how he was freed.

Similarly, an officer of the Federal Security Service, or FSB--successor to the KGB--brushed off questions.

“Secret services never reveal” details, said Alexander A. Zdanovich, a senior FSB spokesman. He did say that “not a single penny was paid for his release. And I can tell you that the special FSB troops took part.”

A native of Queens, N.Y., Gluck leads the Chechnya program of the Nobel Prize-winning group Doctors Without Borders. He was considered a hero by Chechen doctors and nurses for organizing the delivery of sorely needed medicine, supplies and equipment to hospitals damaged during fighting between Russian forces and rebels, and his abduction had caused consternation both in the medical community and among ordinary Chechens. Moscow accused him of traveling in the war zone without permission.

Doctors Without Borders and other international organizations suspended operations in Chechnya after the kidnapping, and they made no immediate announcement Sunday about resuming aid deliveries in the wake of his release.

On NTV, Gluck spoke Russian in clipped sentences and did not display obvious joy or relief. Dressed in a wrinkled green parka, he appeared slightly pale but otherwise normal.

“I am very happy that I am not in detention anymore. As far as my health is concerned, I am feeling fine. I have been treated relatively well. They did not beat me or touch me,” he said.

He also said that he saw no reason “to change my attitude toward the Chechen people and Chechnya.” Cutting short the interview, he promised to answer any other questions later, when he returned to the organization’s regional office in Nazran in the republic of Ingushetia, just outside Chechnya. Russian officials said he would probably be transferred there today.

Russian authorities had accused Chechen rebels of being behind the kidnapping, and in the previous few days government spokesmen had said it appeared that Gluck was being held by a “bandit” known as Yakub.

Zdanovich said that federal forces had observed the kidnappers moving Gluck for several days but had not moved in earlier because of risks to the rescuers.

Pavel Felgenhauer, a military analyst with the Sevodnya newspaper, said he considered the FSB version suspect.

If the rescue occurred during an FSB special operation, why didn’t the FSB have filmed footage, as it does “every time that they free someone for real?” he asked. “Gluck sort of appeared out of nowhere, and this is what is most suspicious.”

“Gluck used the word ‘detention’ in his speech,” Felgenhauer added. “He sounds like he himself believes that he was being held by the FSB, not the Chechens. Chechens do not ‘detain’--they either kill or kidnap.”

Felgenhauer made comparisons to the case of Andrei Babitsky, a Russian journalist for U.S.-funded Radio Liberty detained by Russian forces in Chechnya in January 2000 and then, in a purported prisoner exchange, turned over to alleged Chechen rebels. Babitsky later surfaced and said his abduction had been orchestrated by security services to punish him for critical reporting.

“Gluck looked as scared and intimidated as Andrei Babitsky when he was kidnapped by the FSB in Chechnya. Exactly the same two faces, exactly the same expressions. And exactly the same pattern--first a mysterious disappearance, then a sudden and no less mysterious ‘release,’ ” Felgenhauer said.

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Alexei V. Kuznetsov of The Times’ Moscow Bureau contributed to this report.