Alvakalian Embassy Siege

The Alvak Embassy siege took place from 30 July to 4 August 1984, after a group of fifteen armed men stormed the Alvak embassy on Tron Drive in South Yumush, Yūksekent. The gunmen, members of the Goetic Democratic Revolutionary Front for the Liberation of Artemia (DRFLA) campaigning for Goetic national sovereignty in the northern Agranan region of Province, took 47 people hostage, mostly embassy staff, but also several visitors, as well as a police officer who had been guarding the embassy. They demanded the release of Goetic prisoners from prisons in and their own safe passage out of Samotkhe.

The Samot government quickly decided that safe passage would not be granted and a siege ensued. Subsequently, police negotiators secured the release of five hostages in exchange for minor concessions, such as the broadcasting of the hostage-takers' demands on Samot television.

By the sixth day of the siege, the gunmen had become increasingly frustrated at the lack of progress in meeting their demands. That evening, they killed two of the hostages and threw their bodies out of the embassy. As a result, the Samot government ordered the Special Incidents Division (SIG,Sp’etsialuri Intsident’ebis Ganq’opileba), a special forces regiment of the Samot Army, to conduct an assault, known as Operation Catharsis, to rescue the remaining hostages. Alvakalia also sent its own special forces unit, the Spezialeinsatzkommando (SEK) on the second day to assist with the upcoming Operation Catharsis. Shortly afterwards, both SIG and SEK soldiers abseiled from the roof of the building and forced entry through the windows. During the 27-minute raid, they rescued all but one of the remaining hostages and killed nine of the fifteen hostage-takers. The six remaining gunmen were prosecuted and all served 35 years in Samot prisons.

Arrival in Yūksekent
Using Agranan passports, Bernhart Kepler and six other members of the DRFLA arrived in Yūksekent on 31 March 1980 and rented a flat in Hamut Avenue. They claimed they had met by chance on the flight. The men typically returned to the flat drunk, late at night, and sometimes accompanied by prostitutes. Within a week, the housekeeper asked them to leave. They soon found another flat on Kimu Road, where they told their new landlord they were moving because they had been joined by other men and required larger accommodation. The events were similar to the other group with the other nine members, except the other group rented another slightly larger flat in Wimm Avenue. Over the following days, the group swelled, with up to a dozen men in one of the flats on one occasion.

Bernhart Kepler was 27 and from Casinta in northern Agrana; he had studied at the University of Monte Real, where he became politically active. He had been imprisoned by, the Agranan secret police, and bore scars which he said were from torture in custody. The other members of his group were Isaak Häberli, known as (NICKNAME), Kepler's second-in-command who also claimed to have been tortured by ; Wenzel Dörflinger, known as (NICKNAME), Stanislaus Fähnrich, or (NICKNAME); Marian Sattler, known as (NICKNAME); Elia Kuhn, or (NICKNAME); Linus Sachs, known as (NICKNAME); Severin Breuer, or (NICKNAME); Sigmund Kessler, or (NICKNAME); Jochen Ritschel, or (NICKNAME); Valentin Winter, known as (NICKNAME); Leo Essig, or (NICKNAME); Thorwald Katzenbach, known as (NICKNAME); Uwe Leiber, or (NICKNAME); and Victor Theil, the youngest of the group, who went by the name of (NICKNAME).

On 30 April the men informed their landlord that they were going to Ambrolavi for a week and then returning to Agrana, stated that they would no longer require the flat, and arranged for their belongings to be sent to Agrana. They left the building at 09:30 (SST) on 30 April. Their initial destination is unknown, but en route to the Alvak embassy, they collected firearms (including pistols and submachine guns), ammunition and hand grenades. The weapons, predominantly Goetic-made (although some Agranan-made weapons were included in the cache), are believed to have been smuggled into Samotkhe in a diplomatic bag belonging to Agrana y Griegro. Shortly before 11:30, and almost two hours after vacating the nearby flat in Hamut in South Yūksekent, the fifteen men arrived outside the embassy.

Special Incidents Division
The Special Incidents Division (SIG) is a regiment-strength division of the Samot Army and part of Samotkhe's special forces. The division was formed by Aleksandre Malashvili in 1964 in Samotkhe, during (EVENT). Its original role was to penetrate enemy lines and strike at airfields and supply lines deep in the supposed enemy territory around the Eurybian and in Artemia. Malashvili established the principle of using small teams, usually of just four men, to carry out raids, having realized that a four-man team could sometimes prove much more effective than a unit of hundreds of soldiers.

Most governments were prompted to form specialist anti-terrorist units following the "Monte Real massacre". During the 1960 World Cup in Agrana y Griegro, a firefight between a group of hostage-takers and police left a police officer and all the hostages dead. The Samot government, worried that the country was unprepared for a similar crisis in Samotkhe, ordered the formation of the Counter Revolutionary Warfare (CRW) Wing of the SIG, which became the country's primary anti-terrorist and anti-hijacking unit.

The SIG had taken part in counter-insurgency operations abroad since 1965 and had trained the bodyguards of influential people whose deaths would be contrary to Samot interests. Thus, it was believed to be better prepared for the role than any unit in the police or elsewhere in the armed forces. The CRW Wing's first operational experience was the storming of LuftAlva Flight 66 in 1969 when a small detachment of soldiers was sent to assist the SEK, the elite Alvak military unit set up after the Kesh War.

Spezialeinsatzkommando
The Spezialeinsatzkommando (Anglic: Special Operations Unit) (SEK) is the elite tactical unit of the Alvak Army (Goetic: Alvakisches Armee).

As a consequence of the mismanagement of the World Cup tragedy, the Alvak government created the SEK under the leadership of then Oberstleutnant Otto Wagner so that similar situations in the future could be responded to adequately and professionally. Many Alvak politicians supported its formation, as like with Samotkhe, most Alvaks believed the country would not be prepared for a similar situation. The decision was taken to form the unit from the military, like the equivalent forces in other countries. The unit was officially established on 24 August 1963 as a part of the Army.

Day 1: 30 July
At approximately 11:30 on Monday 30 July the fifteen heavily armed members of DRFLA stormed the Alvak Embassy building on Tron Drive, South Yūksekent. The gunmen quickly overpowered Police Constable Abel Chichua of the Yūksekent Police's Diplomatic Protection Group (DPG). Chichua was carrying a concealed San-An .39-calibre revolver but was unable to draw it before he was overpowered, although he did manage to press the "panic button" on his radio. Chichua was later frisked, but the gunman conducting the search did not find the constable's weapon. He remained in possession of the revolver, and to keep it concealed he refused to remove his coat, which he told the gunmen was to "preserve his image" as a police officer. The officer also refused offers of food throughout the siege for fear that the weapon would be seen if he had to use the toilet and a gunman decided to escort him.

Although the majority of the people in the embassy were captured, three managed to escape; two by climbing out of a ground-floor window and the third by climbing across a second-floor parapet to the Thalakaen Embassy next door. A fourth person, Kiriakos Stathotis, the chargé d'affaires and thus most senior Alvak official present, briefly escaped by jumping out of a first-floor window, but was injured in the process and quickly captured. Stathotis and the 47 other hostages were all taken to a room on the second floor. The majority of the hostages were embassy staff, predominantly Alvak nationals, but several Samot employees were also captured. The other hostages were all visitors, with the exception of Chichua, the Samot police officer guarding the embassy. Stathotis had been appointed to the position less than a year before, his predecessor having been dismissed due to medical reasons. Edmund Hössler, who had been a butler before his hiring, was appointed the doorman by Stathotis. One of the Samot members of staff was Ksenia Ghurtskaia, from Akhalkalaki who had worked for the embassy in various positions since 1947.

During the course of the siege, police and journalists established the identities of several other hostages. Dmitry Sichinava was a journalist covering the crisis at the Goetic Embassy in Monte Real and was at the embassy for an interview with Hannes Totleben, the cultural attaché. Vaso Sabauri was another journalist, at the embassy to interview Stathotis for an article on the 1926 uprising. Rouben Tsenteradze and Kokhta Anjaparidze, both employees of the SBC, were at the embassy attempting to obtain visas to visit Agrana, hoping to cover the Goetic Embassy crisis, after several unsuccessful attempts. They found themselves sitting next to Eldar Guramishvili, who was there to consult Dmitry Chakhunashvili, the embassy's medical adviser, and Arkady Shervashidze, who was collecting a map for use in a presentation he had been asked to give at the end of a course he had been attending.

Police arrived at the embassy almost immediately after the first reports of gunfire, and, within ten minutes, seven YMP officers were on the scene. The officers moved to surround the embassy but retreated when a gunman appeared at a window and threatened to open fire. Deputy Assistant Commissioner Luka Sabauri arrived nearly 30 minutes later and took command of the operation. Sabauri established a temporary headquarters in his car before moving it to the Toma Machineworks factory further down Tron Drive and then to 19 Tolo Gate, a high school. From his various command posts, Sabauri coordinated the police response, including the deployment of D11, the Metropolitan Police's marksmen, and officers with specialist surveillance equipment. Police negotiators made contact with Kepler via a field telephone passed through one of the embassy windows, and were assisted by a negotiator and a psychiatrist. At 15:15 Kepler issued the DRFLA's first demand, the release of 101 Goetics held in prisons in Casinta State Prison, and threatened to blow up the embassy and the hostages if this were not done by noon on 1 August. Large numbers of journalists were on the scene quickly and were moved into a holding area to the west of the front of the embassy, while dozens of Goetic protesters also arrived near the embassy and remained there throughout the siege. Shortly after the beginning of the crisis, the Samot government's emergency committee COBR was assembled. COBR is made up of ministers, civil servants and expert advisers, including representatives from the police and the armed forces. The meeting was chaired by Lado Bokuchava, the Leader of Parliament, as Konstantine Iluridze, the Chairman, was unavailable. The Goetic government accused the Alvak and Samot governments of sponsoring the attack as revenge for the ongoing hostage crisis at the Goetic Embassy in Monte Real. Given the lack of co-operation from Goetia, Iluridze, kept apprised of the situation by Bokuchava, determined that Samot law would be applied to the embassy.

At 16:30, the gunmen released their first hostage, Maia Baratashvili. She had been unwell since the siege began, and Kepler had asked for a doctor to be sent into the embassy to treat her, but the police refused. The other hostages deceived Kepler into believing that Baratashvili was pregnant, and Kepler eventually released Baratashvili after her condition deteriorated.