A senior Chechen official showed a videotape yesterday in which one of four slain Western hostages said they had been spying for British intelligence in the breakaway Russian region.
The Vice-President, Mr Vakha Arsanov, showed the tape, which he said Chechen special services found on Wednesday, to a journalist in Grozny. Later, President Aslan Maskhadov ruled the tape could not be broadcast publicly.
The severed heads of three British citizens (one of Irish parentage) and a New Zealander were found in a sack on a Chechen highway on Tuesday.
"They must have been forced to confess. But we do not know yet. We will have to check this information," Mr Arsanov said.
The British ambassador, Sir Andrew Wood, said in Moscow: "We don't comment on these things in general. But any reasonable analysis would show that we have no wish to spy on Chechen territory."
On the tape, the hostages identify themselves as Mr Rudolf Petschi, Mr Darren Hickey, Mr Peter Kennedy and New Zealander Mr Stanley Shaw. "We have been recruited by the English intelligence service," Mr Kennedy was shown saying in Russian.
"We installed a satellite aerial so that all phone conversations on Chechen territory were heard by German, English and Israeli special services and the CIA."
All four hostages looked tidy and unharmed on the tape. Mr Maskhadov's security chief said later that he had ordered the tape not be broadcast publicly until a thorough investigation was completed.
The men were abducted on October 3rd in Grozny, where they were employed by a British firm, Granger Telecom, installing a mobile telephone system. Chechen officials said their captors murdered them during a botched rescue attempt.
On Wednesday, Mr Maskhadov accused "certain forces who want Chechnya's isolation from the rest of the world" of staging what he called barbaric killings.
The Chechen chief prosecutor, Mr Mansur Tagirov, said the authorities had not yet decided whether to send the heads to Moscow.
Granger Telecom denied yesterday that the four men had any links with British intelligence services.