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How to Deal With Hostage Takers: Soviet Lessons
The abductors called themselves "The Khaled Al-Walid Force" and the "Islamic Liberation Organization". According to SVR (Foreign Intelligence Service) Colonel Yuri Perfilyev, who at the time was the KGG rezident (station chief) in Lebanon, the kidnapping was orchestrated by infamous Hezbollah operative Imad "Hyena"Mugniyeh in response to an offensive by Syria-backed leftist militias in the Lebanese city of Tripoli.
The Shiite radicals demanded that Moscow force Damascus to suspend the Tripoli offensive and close its embassy in Beirut. To demonstrate that they meant business, only two days after the kidnapping, Mugniyeh murdered the wounded Katkov by riddling him with machine gun bullets and left his body in a Beirut rubbish dump.
Perfilyev then met up with Grand Ayatollah Muhammad Fadlallah, then spiritual leader of Lebanese Shiites and told him: "A great power cannot wait forever. From waiting and observing, it can proceed to serious action with unpredictable consequences". Met with silence from Fadlallah, the KGB station chief spoke bluntly:
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