Businessman's son kidnapped for second time

An 11-year-old son of a Georgian businessman has been abducted for the second time this year in Kutaisi, a main city of the kidnap-plagued former Soviet republic.

State television reported that the boy, Georgiy Sardanadze, was seized yesterday after gunmen fired on a car that was carrying him along with the boy’s father and his wife, who were wounded in the shooting.

Kutaisi police head Temuri Nozadze said he could not give details of the circumstances or whether the adults were wounded, but confirmed that the boy had been kidnapped and that he also had been abducted earlier in the year.

Kidnapping for ransom has become a major problem for Georgia in recent years, scaring away foreign investors and tourists who once flocked to the region attracted by its dramatic mountain scenery and famous culture of vast banquets.

Among the more prominent cases were the seizure of two Spanish businessmen who were held captive or more than a year before being released in 2001 and last year’s abduction of a British banking expert who was freed after five months in a shootout between police and his captors.