Slovak kidnapped in Chechnya now freed

A Slovak national kidnapped in Chechnya has been freed, the Slovak news agency TASR reported on Saturday night from Moscow, quoting Boris Gendel, the press secretary at the Slovak Embassy there.

Dusan Kovac, 44 and a father of four, was working for a construction company based in Nitra, west Slovakia, when he was kidnapped in Chechnya almost six months ago.

He was released on Friday and has been reunited with his colleagues at his company's offices in Karabulak in the neighbouring Russian republic of Ingushetia, the Slovak agency said.

BBC Monitoring (http://www.monitor.bbc.co.uk), based in Caversham in southern England, selects and translates information from radio, television, press, news agencies and the Internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages.