Ransom Note Asks $300,000 For Two Mormons Taken In Russia

Two 20-year-old Mormons are being held for ransom after they were abducted Wednesday in central Russia in the most serious attack on American missionaries since they began proselytizing here after the collapse of communism.

The two men, Andrew Lee Propst, of Lebanon, Ore., and Travis Robert Tuttle, of Gilbert, Ariz., disappeared in the Volga River city of Saratov, about 500 miles southeast of Moscow, according to officials of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also known as the Mormon Church.

The abductions come about six months after Russia enacted a controversial law that greatly restricts activities of small religious groups such as the Mormons, deemed as “non-traditional” by Moscow. There are 8,000 Mormons in Russia, according to the Mormon church.

During the debate over the law, one of Russia’s leading political figures, Gen. Alexander Lebed, denounced the Mormons as “filth and scum” and equated them with cults like Aum Shinri Kyo, the group responsible for the 1995 gas attack in a Tokyo subway.

Lebed later apologized for his remarks. But many other nationalist and populist politicians have decried foreign missionaries as a threat to the Orthodox Church and Russian culture.

Propst and Tuttle arrived in the struggling Russian province a year ago to work as missionaries. They were attached to the Mormon Church’s Samara Region Mission, said John Propst, a relative of Andrew Propst.

The church was reluctant to disclose details of the case for fear of endangering the men, but according to U.S. Sen. Orin Hatch, R-Utah, a ransom note demanding $300,000 was left on the doorstep of another church member. Hatch’s Utah constituency includes a large concentration of Mormons.

The abduction of the Mormons is the first time Westerners have been seized in a city in the heart of the country, but kidnapping of missionaries and humanitarian aid workers is rampant in Russia’s restive Caucasus Mountains.

In January, two Swedish missionaries were abducted in remote Dagestan, just across the border from the war-torn province of Chechnya. A video of the pair recently was released, urging their churches to submit to ransom demands. Some organizations reportedly have paid more than $1 million to free their kidnapped personnel in Chechnya.

The Mormon church said it has “taken immediate steps to insure the safety of all other missionaries in Russia’s Samara mission.”