A businessman buried alive in a graveyard reportedly called his brother from his mobile to beg him to pay his debt and get him freed.
Russian Khikmet Salaev, 41, was kidnapped in a financial dispute over an alleged 30 million rouble (£410,000) debt, according to local media.
He was then dragged to the edge of a Moscow cemetery and was buried alive face down – but allowed to keep his mobile phone.
Trapped beneath the ground, covered in soil, he managed to call his 36-year-old brother Ismail “literally from his grave”.
According to news site Moskovsky Komsomolets, Ismail paid 1.2 million roubles towards the debt (£16,430) and also handed over his BMW to Khikmet’s ‘business partners’.
Only after this did the kidnappers give the location of the grave enabling Ismail to dig his brother out.
He was buried for four hours, it was reported. And was found to have suffered several broken ribs from being dragged to the grave by his captors.
The Russian media has warned of a return to the gangster era of the 1990s in the roller coaster years after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
