An Ingush man was in critical condition at a city hospital Thursday after escaping from a Moscow basement where he was reportedly held captive and tortured by law enforcers as revenge for the 2004 Beslan school seizure.

Magomed Khamkhoyev, 35, was abducted by masked assailants Sunday afternoon while sitting in his car near the Prospekt Vernadskogo metro station in southwestern Moscow, Ingush opposition activists said Thursday

Magomed Khazbiyev, an Ingush opposition leader, said Khamkhoyev was one of 10 ethnic Ingush kidnapped in Moscow this month. He accused Ingushetia President Murat Zyazikov of ordering the abductions.

Repeated calls for comment to Zyazikov's spokesman, Bers Yevloyev, went unanswered Thursday.

Khazbiyev and other Ingush opposition activists accuse Zyazikov of ordering the murder last month of Magomed Yevloyev, owner of the embattled opposition web site Ingushetiya.ru. Zyazikov has denied the claim.

Authorities have opened a criminal investigation into Khamkhoyev's abduction, the Moscow branch of the Investigative Committee said in a statement Thursday. A committee spokeswoman said, however, that she could not confirm Khazbiyev's claim that nine other Ingush had been kidnapped.

Dozens of Ingush men stood grimly Thursday afternoon at the entrance to City Hospital No. 67 in northwestern Moscow, where Khamkhoyev was in critical condition with a concussion and severe kidney and liver injuries.

After abducting Khamkhoyev, the assailants took him to two separate locations where he was beaten and subjected to electric shock torture, Ingushetiya.ru reported.

They showed Khamkhoyev the bodies of other dead Ingush and promised to kill him too, saying it was revenge for the Beslan hostage crisis, Kommersant reported Thursday, citing no one.

Khazbiyev denied the report, maintaining that Zyazikov was behind the attack.

A bulk of the terrorists who stormed School No. 1 in Beslan, North Ossetia, in September 2004 were ethnic Ingush. More than 300 people, most of them children, were killed in the siege after federal forces launched a chaotic rescue effort.

Handcuffed and wearing only his underwear, Khamkhoyev managed to escape Wednesday afternoon from a cage where he was being held in the basement of a building in the Serebryany Bor area of northwestern Moscow, Ingushetiya.ru reported Thursday.