Those resettled down to the fortifications were held by hostages. General Sleptsov, in a report of 4 October 1850, stated that he was holding in the Cossack stanitsa Sunzhenskaya, planted on the site of the Chechen aul Dibir-Yurt, hostages (amanats) - people the empire took from the families of the resettled in order to hold their communities in obedience under the threat of reprisal against those taken: "The amanats, taken by me in assurance of the unconditional submission of the resettled, I keep in the stanitsa Sunzhenskaya"[1]. A hostage also secured the massacre of the hamlet of naib Duba (a deputy of Imam Shamil, leader of the highlanders' resistance to the Russian conquest) on 6 March 1847: imperial officer Poltoratsky wrote of the naib's two bribed nephews - "while one of the two was, as an amanat (hostage), held under arrest in the guardhouse at Vozdvizhenskoye, the other... was leading the enemy detachment into his own native nest"[2].