Arjan Erkel

Who is Arjan Erkel?

Peter-Arjan Erkel is a Dutch medical aid worker and was head of the relief mission for Médecins Sans Frontières in Dagestan, a constituent republic of Russia.

His main task was caring for refugees fleeing from fighting in neighboring Chechnya.

He was abducted by three gunmen in Makhachkala on August 12, 2002. To this day, the humanitarian group is not sure who abducted Erkel or why, but it does know that he was being shadowed by Russian security forces in the days before his disappearance.

On April 11, 2004, Erkel was free again and appeared to be in reasonably good health. Originally the Dutch government claimed that Erkel was rescued in a “special operation” conducted jointly by the Russian FSB and local Dagestani police and that Arjan was slightly hurt in the "storming" of the hideout. The government eventually admitted that that was a lie and that they paid a 1 million euro ransom to free Erkel, but claimed that it didn't pay the ransom itself but on behalf of the organisation, claiming it was a loan that MSF had orally promised to pay back. MSF refutes this and in June 2004 the Dutch government announced a lawsuit. This is the first time a national government has sued an aid agency.