Black Sea hostage crisis

The Black Sea hostage crisis took place January 16–19, 1996 on the Black Sea during the First Chechen War. The Panamanian-registered ferry Avrasaya with 177 passengers and 55 crew members on board was hijacked in a Turkish port of Trabzon by an international armed group, which threatened to kill the more than 100 Russian passengers unless the Russian forces ceased its attack against the Chechen separatists in the Kizlyar-Pervomayskoye hostage crisis.

The crisis ended without bloodshed after three days with the safe release of more than 219 unharmed captives; 13 people were hospitalized because of illness and injuries.

The hijackers were five Turkish nationals of Caucasian origin, Muhammed Emin Tokcan (b. 1969 in Gebze), Tuncer Özcan (b. 1968 in Düzce), Sedat Temiz, Erdinç Tekir (b. 1966 in Istanbul), Ertan Coşkun (b. 1960 in Zonguldak), Ceyhan Mollamehmetoğlu, an ethnic Abkhaz from Abkhazia, Khamzat Gitsba (b. 1971), and two Chechens, Ramazan Zubareyev (b. 1963) and Viskhan Abdurrahmanov (b. 1967). The group took over the ship as it was about to depart from the Turkish port of Trabzon en route to Eregli and then to Sochi in Russia. The port security supervisor was shot in the foot during the hijacking and the route was changed to Istanbul.

The hijackers announced they were planning the destruction of the ship in order to draw attention to Chechnya's plight. They also threatened to blow it up together with the 114 Russian hostages if the Russian forces did not halt their ongoing offensive operation against a large group of Chechen fighters led by Salman Raduyev, surrounded with about 200 civilian and police hostages in the village of Pervomayskoye at the border between Chechnya and the Russian republic of Dagestan. Dozens of people were killed when the Russian FSB and military attempted to storm and then shelled Pervomayskoye; on the night (before dawn) of January 18 the Chechens fought their way through the Russian encirclement in a bloody breakout.