Vagan Adzhemyan and Galvin Gibson are charged with conspiracy and kidnapping in the July 29 abduction of Sandro Karmryan, who was forced into the back of a van and held against his will at various locations around Los Angeles for five days.

Prosecutors said the men hatched a plot to kidnap Karmryan because they wanted to extort $1 million in ransom money from his family in the U.S. and Russia.

Adzhemyan's attorney Harland Braun conceded his client was involved in the kidnapping. But he said Adzhemyan, 41, did it out of necessity because Karmryan had paid a Russian mafia boss $27,000 to kill him after a complicated financial deal between the men went sour.

"What's important in this case is why it happened," Braun said.

Prosecutors said Adzhemyan and other assailants went to the Van Nuys apartment of Karmryan's parents early on July 29 and kidnapped Karmryan as he was parking a pickup truck in an underground parking lot. The assailants beat a friend who was with Karmryan, then used a stun gun on Karmryan, prosecutors said.

Karmryan was grievously injured when the friend accidentally shot him in the buttocks as he tried to fend off the attackers. Karmryan suffered a ruptured bowel. And over the course of his captivity, infections from the wound almost killed him, authorities said.

For the five days Karmryan was held, Adzhemyan, Gibson and other coconspirators interrogated him and punched him in the face and in the area of the gunshot wound, prosecutors said. They allegedly used his ATM card to make several withdrawals and forced him to call his family to demand the ransom money.

Karmryan was moved to several locations and ended up at Gibson's home in Mira Loma. Authorities say he was rescued there by a SWAT team who found him blindfolded on an air mattress in a bedroom, guarded by a pit bull terrier. Prosecutors said Gibson, 30, had been watching television while the victim lay in agony.

Karmryan recovered after weeks in the hospital and several surgeries.

The Armenian-born Adzhemyan, a heavyset man who Braun said had been a champion wrestler in Armenia and the Soviet Union in the 1980s, sat quietly throughout Tuesday's proceedings, listening intently as a translator murmured in his ear.

Braun said his client kidnapped Karmryan because he wanted to get proof that Karmryan had paid someone to kill him. Many of the interrogations that took place were captured on cell phone or audio recordings, and Braun said Karmryan admitted more than 100 times to paying a killer. Prosecutors said the confession had been forced.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Brian Michael declined to comment when asked outside court if Karmryan had any connections with the Russian mafia.

Law enforcement officials say they found dozens of marijuana plants and several rounds of ammunition in Gibson's home. Gibson, who was convicted of manslaughter in 1996, was charged with manufacturing marijuana and being a felon in possession of ammunition.

Gibson's attorney Barry Smith said his client was simply trying to help his friend Adzhemyan, whom he believed was in mortal danger from Karmryan.

Another defendant, Suren Garibyan, was charged in the case but pleaded guilty last month in a deal with prosecutors.