diff --git a/lib/net/ldap/filter.rb b/lib/net/ldap/filter.rb
index b323762..fc4b090 100644
--- a/lib/net/ldap/filter.rb
+++ b/lib/net/ldap/filter.rb
@@ -208,12 +208,12 @@ class Filter
         end
         [@left.to_s.to_ber, seq.to_ber].to_ber_contextspecific 4
       else                      #equality
-        [@left.to_s.to_ber, @right.to_ber].to_ber_contextspecific 3
+        [@left.to_s.to_ber, unescape(@right).to_ber].to_ber_contextspecific 3
       end
     when :ge
-      [@left.to_s.to_ber, @right.to_ber].to_ber_contextspecific 5
+      [@left.to_s.to_ber, unescape(@right).to_ber].to_ber_contextspecific 5
     when :le
-      [@left.to_s.to_ber, @right.to_ber].to_ber_contextspecific 6
+      [@left.to_s.to_ber, unescape(@right).to_ber].to_ber_contextspecific 6
     when :and
       ary = [@left.coalesce(:and), @right.coalesce(:and)].flatten
       ary.map {|a| a.to_ber}.to_ber_contextspecific( 0 )
@@ -229,6 +229,12 @@ class Filter
     end
   end
 
+  def unescape(right)
+    right.gsub(/\\([a-fA-F\d]{2,2})/) do
+      [$1.hex].pack("U")
+    end
+  end
+
 
 	# Converts an LDAP search filter in BER format to an Net::LDAP::Filter
 	# object. The incoming BER object most likely came to us by parsing an