 In December 1998, Barayev proclaimed the Supreme Council of Islamic Jamaats, dug trenches around Urus-Martan and threatened to attack targets across and outside of Chechnya if Maskhadov tried to fight them.A commonly accusation against Barayev regarded the late 1998 abduction and beheading of four foreign mobile phone engineers.It was claimed that the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB) outbid the employers of kidnapped British engineers to get them decapitated by Barayev and his gang rather than be released; supposedly, the video and photographic materials of their executions fed the FSB anti-western propaganda efforts at beginning of Second Chechen War.