Beslan school hostage crisis
Encyclopedia
The Beslan school hostage crisis (also referred to as the Beslan school siege or Beslan massacre) of early September 2004 was a three-day hostage-taking of over 1,100 people which ended in the deaths of over 380. It began when a group of armed mostly Ingush
and Chechen
Islamic militants took more than 1,100 people (including 777 children) hostage
on 1 September, at School Number One (SNO) in the town of Beslan
, North Ossetia
, an autonomous republic
in the North Caucasus
region of the Russian Federation
. The hostage taking was carried out by the group Riyadus-Salikhin
, sent by the Chechen separatist warlord Shamil Basayev
who issued demands of an end to the Second Chechen War
and Russian withdrawal from Chechnya. On the third day of the standoff
, Russian security forces were forced to storm the building, using tank
s to make an entrance in the near gallery, after several explosions happened inside the gym. Incendiary rockets and other heavy weapons were used later when hostage rescue was over. Ultimately, at least 334 hostages were killed, including 186 children; hundreds more were injured and many were reported missing. Russian special forces lost 21 men in the storm.
The tragedy
led to security and political repercussions in Russia, most notably a series of federal government reforms consolidating power in the Kremlin
and strengthening of the powers of the President of Russia. According to American
NGO
Freedom House
, these reforms consolidated Russia as a politically non-free, authoritarian state since the mid-2000s. As of 2011, there are many aspects of the crisis still in dispute, including how many militants were involved, their preparations, and whether some of them had escaped. Questions about the government's management of the crisis have also persisted, including disinformation
and censorship
in news media
, repression of journalists who rushed to Beslan, the nature and content of negotiation
s with the militants, the responsibility for the bloody outcome, and the government's use of possibly excessive force.
Street SNO was one of seven schools in Beslan, a town of around 35,000 people in the republic of North Ossetia-Alania, Russian Caucasus
. The school, located right next to the district police station
, had around 60 teachers and more than 800 students. Its gym
nasium, where most of the estimated 1,200 hostages were to spend 52 hours of captivity, was a recent addition, measuring 10 metres wide and 25 metres long. There were reports that the men disguised as repairmen had concealed weapons and explosives in the school sometime during July 2004, but this was later officially refuted. However, several witnesses have since testified
they were made to help their captors remove the weapons from the caches hidden in the school. There were also claims that the militants or their accomplices constructed a "sniper
's nest" position on the sports hall roof in advance.
It was also reported that the SNO in Beslan was used by Ossetian militia
forces as an internment
camp for ethnic Ingush civilians in late 1992 during the short but bloody Ingush–Ossetian East Prigorodny conflict
, in which hundreds of Ingush residents of North Ossetia lost their lives or disappeared during the week-long hostilities, and thus the school was arguably chosen as the target of the attack by the mostly-Ingush rebel group because of this connection. Some believe that the entire siege was cleverly crafted by the Russian government so as to serve as a pretense for consolidating and expanding the power of Putin's Kremlin. According to media reports, SNO was one of several buildings in which the Ossetians had held Ingush citizens, many of them women and children; the hostages sat on the gymnasium floor, deprived of food and water, just as the Ossetians would do in the 2004 siege, and several male hostages were hauled outside and executed. Beslan, like the major Army airbase
in nearby Mozdok, was also site of an airfield used by the Russian military aviation
for its combat operation in the nearby republic of Chechnya
since 1994.
. On this day, the children, accompanied by their parents and other relatives, attend ceremonies hosted by their school. Because of the pupils and family members attending the Day of Knowledge festivities, the number of people in the schools was considerably higher than usual for a normal school day. Early in the morning, a group of several dozen heavily-armed Islamic guerrillas left a forest encampment located in the vicinity of the village of Psedakh in the neighbouring republic of Ingushetia
, east of North Ossetia and west of war-torn Chechnya. The rebels wore green military camouflage
and black balaclava masks, and in some cases were also wearing explosive belt
s and explosive underwear. On the way to Beslan, on a country road near the North Ossetian village of Khurikau, they had captured an Ingush police officer, Major Sultan Gurazhev. Gurazhev escaped after reaching the town and went to the district police department to inform that his duty handgun and badge
were taken away.
At 09:11 local time, the rebels arrived at Beslan in a GAZelle
police van and a GAZ-66
military truck. Many witnesses and independent experts claim that there were, in fact, two groups of attackers, and that the first group was already at the school when the second group arrived by truck. At first, some at the school mistook the guerrillas for Russian special forces practicing a security drill. However, the attackers soon began shooting in the air and forcing everybody from the school grounds into the building. During the initial chaos, up to 50 people managed to flee and alert authorities to the situation. A number of people also managed to hide in the boiler
room. After an exchange of gunfire with police and an armed local civilian, in which it was reported one attacker was shot dead and two were wounded, the militants seized the school building. Reports of the death toll from this shootout ranged from two to eight people, while more than a dozen people were injured.
The attackers took approximately 1,200 hostages (the number of hostages was initially downplayed by the government to merely 200–400, and then for an unknown reason announced to be exactly 354; in 2005, their number was put at 1,128). They herded their captives into the school's gym and confiscated all their mobile phone
s under threat of death, and ordered everyone to speak in Russian
and only when spoken to. When a father named Ruslan Betrozov stood to calm people and repeat the rules in the local language, Ossetic
, a gunman approached him, asked Betrozov if he was done, and then shot him in the head. Another father named Vadim Bolloyev, who refused to kneel, was also shot by a captor and then bled to death. Their bodies were dragged from the sports hall; this left a trail of blood visible in the video later made by the hostage-takers.
After gathering the hostages in the gym, the attackers singled out among the male teachers, school employees and fathers the 15–20 strongest adults they apparently thought might represent a threat, and took them into a corridor next to the cafeteria
on the second floor, where soon a deadly blast took place. Apparently an explosive belt on one of the female bombers detonated, killing another female bomber (it was also claimed the second woman died from a bullet wound) and several of the selected hostages, as well as mortally injuring one male hostage-taker. According to the version presented by the surviving hostage-taker, the blast was actually triggered by the "Polkovnik
", the group leader, when he set off the bomb by remote control
to kill those who openly disagreed about the child hostages and intimidate other possible dissent
ers. The hostages from this group who were still alive were then ordered to lie down and shot with automatic rifle
by another gunman; all but one of them was killed. The militants then forced other hostages to throw the bodies out of the building and to wash the blood off the floor. A hostage named Aslan Kudzayev, who was forced to throw the bodies, escaped by jumping out the window; the authorities briefly detained him as a suspected hostage-taker. Karen Mdinaradze, the Alania
football team's cameraman, survived the explosion as well as the shooting; when discovered to be still alive, he was allowed to return to the sports hall, where he lost consciousness.
), Internal Troops
, and Russian Army
forces; spetsnaz
, including the elite Alfa
and Vympel
units of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB); and the OMON
special units of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs
(MVD). A line of three apartment buildings facing the school gym was evacuated and taken over by the special forces. The perimeter
they made was within 225 metres (738.2 ft) of the school, inside the range of the militants' grenade launcher
s. No fire-fighting equipment was in position and, despite the previous experiences of the 2002 Moscow theater hostage crisis
, there were few ambulance
s ready. The chaos was worsened by the presence of Ossetian volunteer militiamen (opolchentsy) and armed civilians among the crowds of relatives who had gathered at the scene; there were perhaps as many as 5,000 of them.
The attackers mined the gym and the rest of the building with improvised explosive device
s (IEDs), and surrounded it with tripwires
. In a further bid to deter rescue attempts, they threatened to kill 50 hostages for every one of their own members killed by the police, and to kill 20 hostages for every gunman injured. They also threatened to blow up the school if government forces attacked. To avoid being overwhelmed by gas attack like their comrades in the 2002 Moscow hostage crisis, insurgents quickly smashed the school's windows. The captors prevented hostages from eating and drinking (calling this a "hunger strike
", which they said they joined too) until North Ossetia's President Alexander Dzasokhov
would arrive to negotiate with them. However, the FSB set up their own crisis headquarters from which Dzasokhov was excluded, and threatened to arrest him if he tried to go to the school.
The Russian government announced that it would not use force to rescue the hostages, and negotiations towards a peaceful resolution took place on the first and second days, at first led by Leonid Roshal
, a pediatrician whom the hostage-takers had reportedly asked for by name (Roshal had helped negotiate the release of children in the 2002 Moscow siege, but also had given advice to the Russian security services as they prepared to storm the theater, for which he received the Hero of Russia award). However, a witness statement in the court indicated that the Russian negotiators confused Roshal with Vladimir Rushailo
, a Russian security official. According to Savelyev's report, the official ("civilian") headquarters was looking for a peaceful resolution of the situation at the same time when the secret ("heavy") headquarters set up by the FSB was preparing the assault. Savelyev wrote that in many ways the "heavies" restricted the actions of the "civilians", in particular in their attempts to negotiate with the militants.
At Russia's request, a special meeting of the United Nations Security Council
was convened on the evening of 1 September, at which the council members demanded "the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages of the terrorist attack". U.S.
President
George W. Bush
made a statement offering "support in any form" to Russia.
showed Dzasokhov a decree
signed by the Prime Minister of Russia
Mikhail Fradkov
appointing North Ossetian FSB chief Major General Valery Andreyev as head of the operational headquarters. In April 2005, however, a Moscow News
journalist received photocopies of the interview protocols
of Dzasokhov and Andreyev by investigators that revealed that two headquarters had been formed in Beslan: a formal one, upon which was laid all responsibility, and a secret one ("heavies"), which made the real decisions, and at which Andreyev had never been in charge.
The Russian government downplayed the numbers, repeatedly stating there were only 354 hostages; this reportedly angered the hostage-takers who further mistreated their captives. Several officials also said there appeared to be only 15 to 20 militants in the school. The crisis was met with a near-total silence from then-President of Russia Vladimir Putin
and the rest of Russia's political leaders. Only on the second day did Putin make his first public comment on the siege during a meeting in Moscow with King Abdullah II of Jordan
: "Our main task, of course, is to save the lives and health of those who became hostages. All actions by our forces involved in rescuing the hostages will be dedicated exclusively to this task." It was the only public statement by Putin about the crisis until one day after its bloody end. In protest, several people at the scene raised signs reading: "Putin! Release our children! Meet their demands!" and "Putin! There are at least 800 hostages!" The locals also said they would not allow any storming or "poisoning of their children" (a clear allusion to the Moscow hostage crisis chemical agent
).
In the afternoon, the gunmen allowed Ruslan Aushev
, respected ex-President of Ingushetia
and retired Soviet Army
general, to enter the school building and agreed to release 11 nursing women and all 15 baby children personally to him. The women's older children were left behind and one mother refused to leave, so Aushev carried out her child instead. The rebels gave Aushev a video tape made in the school and a note with demands from their purported leader, Shamil Basayev, who was not himself present in Beslan. The existence of the note was kept secret by the Russian authorities, while the tape was declared as being "empty" (later this turned out to be false, too). It was falsely announced that the hostage-takers made no demands. In the note, Basayev demanded recognition of a "formal independence
for Chechnya" in the frame of the Commonwealth of Independent States
. He also said that although the Chechen separatists "had played no part" in the Russian apartment bombings of 1999
, they would now publicly take responsibility for them if needed. Some Russian officials and state-controlled media later attacked Aushev for entering the school, accusing him of colluding with the hostage-takers.
The lack of food and water took its toll on the young children, many of whom were forced to stand for long periods in the hot, tightly-packed gym. Many children took off their clothing because of the sweltering heat within the gymnasium, which led to rumors of sexual impropriety, though the hostages later explained it was merely due to the stifling heat and being denied any water. Many children fainted, and parents feared they would die. Some hostages drank their own urine
. Occasionally, the militants (many of whom took off their masks) took out some of the unconscious children and poured water on their heads before returning them to the sports hall. Later in the day, some adults also started to faint from fatigue and thirst. Because of the conditions in the gym, when the explosion and gun battle began on the third day, many of the surviving children were so fatigued that they were barely able to flee from the carnage.
At around 15:30, two grenade
s were fired approximately ten minutes apart by the militants at security forces outside the school, setting a police car ablaze and injuring one officer, but the Russian forces did not return fire. As the day and night wore on, the combination of stress
and sleep deprivation
—and possibly drug withdrawal
—made the hostage-takers increasingly hysterical
and unpredictable. The crying of the children irritated them, and on several occasions crying children and their mothers were threatened with being shot if they would not stop crying. Russian authorities claimed that the hostage-takers had "listened to German heavy metal group Rammstein
on personal stereos
during the siege to keep themselves edgy and fired up." (Rammstein had previously come under fire following the Columbine High School massacre
, and again in 2007 after the Jokela High School shooting.)
Overnight, a police officer was injured by shots fired from the school. Talks were broken off, then resumed the next day.
Chairman Taymuraz Mansurov, and First Deputy Chairman Izrail Totoonti together made contact with President of Ichkeria
Aslan Maskhadov
, a Chechen separatist leader fighting a guerrilla war in Chechnya. Totoonti said that both Maskhadov and his Western-based emissary Akhmed Zakayev
declared they were ready to fly to Beslan to negotiate with the militants, which was later confirmed by Zakayev. Totoonti said that Maskhadov's sole demand was his unhindered passage to the school; however, the assault began one hour after the agreement on his arrival was made. He also mentioned that journalists from Al Jazeera
television offered for three days to participate in the negotiations and enter the school even as hostages, "but their services were not needed by anyone."
Russian presidential advisor and former police general, an ethnic Chechen Aslambek Aslakhanov
, was also said to be close to breakthrough in the secret negotiations. By the time he left Moscow on the second day, Aslakhanov had accumulated the names of more than 700 well-known Russian figures who were volunteering to enter the school as hostages in exchange for the release of children. Aslakhanov said the hostage-takers agreed to allow him to enter the school the next day at 3 p.m.. Two hours before this, however, the storming began.
s approached the school, an explosion was heard from the gymnasium. The hostage-takers then opened fire, killing two of them. The other two took cover behind their vehicle.
The second, "strange-sounding", explosion was heard 22 seconds later. At 13:05 the fire on the roof of the sports hall started and soon the burning rafters and roofing fell onto the hostages below, many of them injured but still living. Eventually, the entire roof collapsed, turning the room into an inferno. The flames reportedly killed some 160 people (more than half of all hostage fatalities).
There are several widely conflicting versions regarding the source and nature of the explosions:
Police Lieutenant Colonel Elbrus Nogayev, whose wife and daughter died in the school, said: "I heard a command saying, 'Stop shooting! Stop shooting!' while other troops' radios said, 'Attack!'" As the fighting began, an oil company president and negotiator Mikhail Gutseriyev
(an ethnic Ingush) phoned the hostage-takers; he heard "You tricked us!" in answer. Five hours later, Gutseriyev and his interlocutor reportedly had their last conversation, during which the man said: "The blame is yours and the Kremlin's."
According to Torshin, the order to start the operation was given by the head of the North Ossetian FSB Valery Andreyev. However, statements by both Andreyev and the Dzasokhov indicated that it was FSB deputy directors Vladimir Pronichev and Vladimir Anisimov who were actually in charge of the Beslan operation. General Andreyev also told North Ossetia's Supreme Court
that the decision to use heavy weapons during the assault was made by the head of the FSB's Special Operations Center, Colonel General Aleksandr Tikhonov
.
A chaotic battle broke out as the special forces fought to enter the school. The forces included the assault groups of the FSB and the associated troops of the Russian Army and the Russian Interior Ministry, supported by a number of T-72
tanks from Russia's 58th Army (commandeered by Tikhonov from the military on 2 September), BTR-80
wheeled armoured personnel carriers and armed helicopter
s, including at least one Mi-24 attack helicopter
. Many local civilians also joined in the chaotic battle, having brought along their own weapons (at least one of the armed volunteers is known to have been killed). At the same time, regular conscript
soldiers reportedly fled the scene as the fighting began; civilian witnesses claimed that the local police also had panicked, even firing in the wrong direction.
At least three but as many as nine powerful Shmel rockets were fired at the school from the positions of the special forces (three or nine empty disposable tubes were later found on the rooftops of nearby apartment blocks). The use of the Shmel rockets, classified in Russia as flamethrowers and in the West
as thermobaric weapon
s, was initially denied, but later admitted by the government. A report by an aide to the military prosecutor
of the North Ossetian garrison
stated that RPG-26
rocket-propelled grenades were used as well. The rebels also used grenade launchers, firing at the Russian positions in the apartment buildings.
According to military prosecutor, a BTR armoured vehicle drove close to the school and opened fire from its 14.5x114mm KPVT heavy machine gun
at the windows on the second floor. Eye-witnesses (among them Totoonti and Kesayev) and journalists saw two T-72 tanks advance on the school that afternoon, at least one of which fired its 125 mm main gun several times (the locals found three tank cannon shell casings at the site). During the later trial, tank commander Viktor Kindeyev testified about having fired "one blank
shot and six antipersonnel
-high explosive shells
" on orders from the FSB. The use of tanks and armoured personnel carriers was eventually admitted by Lieutenant General Viktor Sobolev, commander of the 58th Army. Another witness cited in the Kesayev report claims that he had jumped onto the turret of a tank in an attempt to prevent it from firing on the school. Scores of hostages were moved by the militants from the burning sports hall into the other parts of the school, in particular the cafeteria, where they were forced to stand at windows and many of them were shot by troops outside as they were used as human shields, according to the survivors (such as Kudzeyeva, Kusrayeva and Naldikoyeva). Savelyev estimated that 106 to 110 hostages died after being moved to the cafeteria.
By 15:00, two hours after the assault began, Russian troops claimed control of most of the school. However, fighting was still continuing on the grounds as evening fell, including resistance from a group of militants holding out in the school's basement
. During the battle, a group of some 13 militants broke through the military cordon and took refuge nearby. Several of them were believed to have entered a nearby two-story building, which was destroyed by tanks and flamethrowers around 21:00, according to the Ossetian committee's findings (Kesayev Report). Another group of militants appeared to head back over the railway, chased by helicopters into the town.
Firefighter
s, who were called by Andreyev two hours after the fire started, were not prepared to battle the blaze that raged in the gymnasium. One fire truck crew arrived after two hours at their own initiative but with only 200 litres (52.8 US gal) of water and unable to connect to the nearby hydrants, and the first water came nearly two and a half hours after the start of the fire at 15:28; the second fire engine arrived at 15:43. Few ambulances were available to transport the hundreds of injured victims, who were mostly driven to hospital in private cars. One suspected militant was lynch
ed on the scene by a mob of civilians, an event filmed by the Sky News
crew, while an unarmed militant was captured alive by the OMON troops while trying to hide under their truck (he was later identified as Nur-Pashi Kulayev). Some of the dead insurgents appeared to be mutilated
by the commandos.
Sporadic explosions and gunfire continued at night despite reports that all resistance by militants had been suppressed, until some 12 hours after the first explosions. Early the next day Putin ordered the borders of North Ossetia closed while some hostage-takers were apparently still pursued.
in Beslan, which was highly unprepared to cope with the casualties, before the patients were sent to better-equipped facilities in Vladikavkaz
. There was an inadequate supply of hospital beds, medication
, and neurosurgery
equipment. Relatives were not allowed to visit hospitals where the wounded were treated, and doctor
s were not allowed to use their mobile phones.
The day after the storming, bulldozer
s gathered the debris of the building, including the body parts of the victims, and removed it to a garbage dump. The first of the many funeral
s were conducted on September 4, the day after the final assault, with more following soon after, including mass burials of 120 people. The local cemetery was too small and had to be expanded to an adjacent plot of land to accommodate the dead. Three days after the siege, 180 people were still missing. Many survivors remained severely traumatized and at least one female former hostage committed suicide
after returning home.
Russian President Vladimir Putin reappeared publicly during a hurried trip to the Beslan hospital in the early hours of September 4 to see several of the wounded victims in his only visit to Beslan. He was later criticised for not meeting the families of victims. After returning to Moscow, he ordered a two-day period of national mourning for September 6 and September 7, 2004. In his televised
speech Putin paraphrased Joseph Stalin
saying: "We showed ourselves to be weak. And the weak get beaten." On the second day of mourning, an estimated 135,000 people joined a government-organised rally
against terrorism on the Red Square
in Moscow
. An estimated 40,000 people gathered in Saint Petersburg
's Palace Square
.
Increased security measures were introduced to Russian cities. More than 10,000 people without proper documents were detained by Moscow police in a "terrorist hunt". Colonel Magomed Tolboyev, a cosmonaut and Hero of the Russian Federation
, was attacked by Moscow police patrol and beaten because of his Chechen-sounding name. The Russian public appeared to be generally supportive of increased security measures. A September 16, 2004 Levada-Center poll
found 58% of Russians supporting stricter counter-terrorism
laws and the death penalty for terrorism, while 33% would support banning all Chechens from entering Russian cities.
Basayev said that the Beslan attack had a price tag of 8,000 euro
s for his organisation.
.
In addition, Vladimir Putin signed a law which replaces the direct election of the heads of the federal subjects of Russia
with a system whereby they are proposed by the President of Russia and approved or disapproved by the elected legislative power bodies of the federal subjects. The election system for the Russian Duma
was also repeatedly amended, eliminating the election of State Duma members by single-mandate districts. The Kremlin consolidated its control over the Russian media and increasingly attacked the non-governmental organization
s (especially those foreign-founded). Critics allege that the Putin's circle of silovik
i used the Beslan crisis as an excuse to increase their grip on Russia. On September 16, 2004, the United States Secretary of State
Colin Powell
said that Russia was "pulling back on some of the democratic
reforms" while George W. Bush expressed concern that Putin's latest moves to centralize power "could undermine democracy in Russia". The Russian Foreign Minister
Sergei Lavrov rejected such criticism, insisting the measures are an "internal matter."
The attack also marked the end to the mass terrorism in the North Caucasus separatist conflict until 2010, when two Dagestan
i female suicide bombers attacked two train stations in Russia
. This is discussed in more detail below. After Beslan, there was a period of several years of lack of suicide attacks in and outside of Chechnya.
The raid on Beslan had, in fact, more to do with the Ingush involved than the Chechens, but was highly symbolic for both nations. The Ossetes and Ingush had (and have) a conflict over ownership of the Prigorodny District
, which hit high points during the 1944 Stalinist purges, and the ethnic cleansing
of Ingush by Ossetes (the Ossetes getting assistance from the Russian military) in 1992-3. At the time of the raid, there were still over 40,000 Ingush refugees in tent camps in Ingushetia and Chechnya. The Beslan school itself had been used against the Ingush, as in 1992 the gym was used as a pen to round up Ingush during the ethnic cleansing by the Ossetes. For the Chechens, the motive was revenge for the destruction of their homes and, indeed families: Beslan was one of the sites from which federal air raids were launched at Chechnya. The overwhelming majority of the people involved in the hostage taking raid had also been direct victims of Russian government abuse, including many who were victimized as children; the female hostage-taker Khaula Nazirov reportedly had her children killed by the Russian forces in an attack on a school in Chechnya.
Once, however, it was broadcast that there were large numbers of children killed by a group that included Chechens, the Chechens were struck with a large amount of shame. One spokesman for the Chechen independence cause stated that "Such a bigger blow could not be dealt upon us... People around the world will think that Chechens are monsters if they could attack children". He went on to state that the Russians had killed far more children, including in schools during their war in Chechnya, and that this had been deliberately ignored by the rest of the world. Nonetheless, largely for this reason, attacks ceased until 2008.
At least 396 people, mostly hostages, were killed during the crisis. By September 7, 2004, Russian officials revised the death toll down to 334, including 156 children, but close to 200 people remained missing or unidentified. It was claimed by the locals that over 200 of those killed were found with burn
s, and 100 or more of them burned when still alive. The latest reported fatality was 33-year-old librarian
Yelena Avdonina, who succumbed to her wounds on December 8, 2006.
Russia's Minister of Health and Social Reform Mikhail Zurabov said the total number of people who were injured in the crisis exceeded 1,200. The exact number of people that received ambulatory assistance immediately after the crisis is not known, but is estimated to be around 700 (753 according to the UN). Moscow-based military analyst Pavel Felgenhauer
concluded on September 7, 2004, that 90% of the surviving hostages had sustained injuries. At least 437 people, including 221 children, were hospitalized. 197 children were taken to the Children’s Republican Clinical Hospital in the North Ossetian capital of Vladikavkaz, and 30 were in cardiopulmonary resuscitation
units in critical condition
. Another 150 people were transferred to the Vladikavkaz Emergency Hospital. Sixty-two people, including 12 children, were treated in two local hospitals in Beslan, while six children with severe injuries were flown to Moscow for specialist treatment. The majority of the children were treated for burns, gunshot injuries
and shrapnel wounds, and mutilation caused by explosions. Some had to have limbs amputated
and eyes removed and many children were permanently disabled. One month after the attack, 240 people (160 of them children) were still being treated in hospitals in Vladikavkaz and in Beslan. Surviving children and parents have received psychological
treatment at Vladikavkaz Rehabilitation Centre.
It is not known how many members of Russia's elite special forces died in the fighting, as official figures ranged from 11 through 12 and 16 (seven Alfa and nine Vympel) to more than 20 killed. There are only 10 names on the special forces monument in Beslan. The fatalities included all three commanders of the assault group: Colonel Oleg Ilyin and Lieutenant Colonel Dmitry Ratzumovsky of Vympel, and Major Alexander Petrov of Alfa. At least 30 commandos suffered serious wounds.
, they had answered: 'We do not understand, speak Russian.'" Freed hostages said that the hostage-takers spoke Russian with accents typical for the Caucasians.
Even as in the past Putin has rarely hesitated to blame the Chechen separatists for acts of terrorism, this time he avoided linking the attack with the Second Chechen War
. Instead, he blamed the crisis on the "direct intervention of international terrorism", ignoring the nationalist
roots of the crisis. The Russian government sources initially claimed that nine of the militants in Beslan were of Arab descent and one was a black Africa
n (called "a negro" by Andreyev), though only two Arabs were identified later. Independent analysts such as that of the Moscow political commentator Andrei Piontkovsky said Putin at this moment tried to minimize the number and scale of Chechen terrorist attacks, rather than to exaggerate them like he did in the past. Putin appeared to connect the events to the U.S.-led "War on Terrorism
", but at the same time has accused the West of indulging terrorists.
On September 17, 2004, radical Chechen guerrilla commander Shamil Basayev, at this time operating autonomously from the rest of the North Caucasian rebel movement, issued a statement claiming responsibility for the Beslan school siege, which was incidentally strikingly similar to the Chechen raid on Budyonnovsk
in 1995 and the Moscow theatre crisis in 2002, incidents in which hundreds of Russian civilians were held hostage by the Chechen rebels personally led by Basayev or answering to him. Basayev said his Riyadus-Salikhin "martyr battalion" had carried out this attack and also claimed responsibility for a series of terrorist bombings in Russia in the weeks before Beslan crisis. He said that he originally planned to seize at least one school in either Moscow or Saint Petersburg, but lack of funds forced him to pick North Ossetia, "the Russian garrison in the North Caucasus". Basayev blamed the Russian authorities for "a terrible tragedy" in Beslan. Basayev claimed that he had miscalculated the Kremlin's determination to end the crisis by all means possible. He said he was "cruelly mistaken" and that he was "not delighted by what happened there", but also added to be "planning more Beslan-type operations in the future because we are forced to do so." However, it was the last major act of terrorism
in Russia until 2009, as Basayev was soon persuaded to give up indiscriminate attacks by the new rebel leader Abdul-Halim Sadulayev, who made Basayev his second-in-command but banned hostage taking, kidnapping
for ransom
, and operations specifically targeting civilians.
The Chechen separatist leader Aslan Maskhadov immediately denied that his forces were involved in the siege, calling it "a blasphemy
" for which "there is no justification". Maskhadov described the perpetrators of Beslan as "madmen" driven out of their senses by Russian acts of brutality. He condemned the action and all attacks against civilians via a statement issued by his envoy Akhmed Zakayev in London
, blamed it on what he called a radical local group, and agreed to the North Ossetian proposition to act as a negotiator. Later, he also called on western governments to initiate peace talks between Russia and Chechnya and added to "categorically refute all accusations by the Russian government that President Maskhadov had any involvement in the Beslan event." In response, Putin has vowed not to negotiate with "child-killers
", comparing the calls for the negotiations with the appeasement of Hitler, and put a $10 million bounty
on Maskhadov (the same amount as he put out for Basayev). Maskhadov was killed by Russian commandos in Chechnya on March 8, 2005, and buried in an undisclosed location.
Shortly after the crisis, official Russian sources stated that the attackers were part of a supposed international group led by Basayev that included a number of Arabs with connections to al-Qaeda
, and claimed they picked up phone calls in Arabic from the Beslan school to Saudi Arabia
and another undisclosed Middle East
ern country. Two English
/Algeria
ns are among the identified rebels who actively participated in the attack: Osman Larussi and Yacine Benalia
. Another UK
citizen named Kamel Rabat Bouralha
, arrested while trying to leave Russia immediately following the attack, was suspected to be a key organizer. All three were linked to the Finsbury Park Mosque
of north London
. The allegations of al-Qaeda involvement were not repeated since then by the Russian government.
According to the Russian government, following people were named as planners and financiers of the attack:
In November 2004, 28-year-old Akhmed Merzhoyev and 16-year-old Marina Korigova of Sagopshi
, Ingushetia, were arrested by the Russian authorities in connection with Beslan. Merzhoyev was charged with providing food and equipment to the hostage-takers, and Korigova with having possession of a phone that Tsechoyev had phoned multiple times. Korigova was released when her defence attorney
showed that she was given the phone by an acquaintance after the crisis.
.
The hostage-takers were reported to have made the following demands:
Dzasokhov and Zyazikov did not come to Beslan (Dzasokhov later claimed that he was forcibly stopped by "a very high-ranking general from the Interior Ministry [who] said, 'I have received orders to arrest you if you try to go'"). The stated reason why Zyazikov did not arrive was that he has been "sick". Aushev, Zyazikov's predecessor at the post of Ingushetia's president (he was forced to resign by Putin in 2002), entered the school and secured the release of 26 hostages.
Aslakhanov said that the hostage-takers also demanded the release of some 28 to 30 suspects detained in the crackdown following the rebel raids in Ingushetia
earlier in June.
The 1 September11:00–11:30 letter sent along with a hostage ER doctor: (The case papers of the Nur-Pashi Kulayev's criminal trial. File pages 196–198, the vetting protocol. Cited at the trial session January 19, 2006.)
The telephone number according to pravdabeslana.ru; the federal committee reported 8–928–728–33–74. The hostage who was made to write the note misspelled doctor Roshal's name.
The September 116:00–16:30 letter brought by the same female hostage: According to the federal committee report this note contained a corrected phone number (ending with 47) and addition of Aushev to the list of requested persons.
The September 216:45 letter sent along with Ruslan Aushev: (A note hand-written on a quad ruling notebook sheet sized 32 by 20 cm. Source: ibidem. Pages 189–192, the vetting protocol. Pages 193–194, a photocopy of this note.)
Later, Basayev said there was also an alternative option: if President Putin submitted a letter of resignation
, the hostage-takers would "release all the children and go back to Chechnya with others."
Many of the surviving hostages and eyewitnesses claim there were many more captors, some of whom may have escaped. It was also initially claimed that three hostage-takers were captured alive, including their leader Vladimir Khodov
and a female militant. Witness testimonies during the Kulayev trial involved the reported presence of a number of apparently Slavic
and unaccented Russian- and "perfect" Ossetian-speaking individuals among the hostage-takers who were not seen among the bodies of the militants killed during the assault by Russian security forces and the witnesses said they were not seen by the third and final day of the crisis at all. Those mysterious men (and a woman according to one testimony) included a man with red beard who was reportedly issuing orders even to the kidnappers' leaders, and whom the hostages were forbidden to look at (possibly the militant known only as "Fantomas
", an ethnic Russian who served as a bodyguard
to Shamil Basayev).
According to Basayev, "Thirty-three mujahideen
took part in Nord-West
. Two of them were women. We prepared four [women] but I sent two of them to Moscow on August 24. They then boarded the two airplanes that blew up
. In the group there were 12 Chechen men, two Chechen women, nine Ingush, three Russians, two Arabs, two Ossetians, one Tartar
, one Kabardinian and one Guran
. The Gurans are a people who live near Lake Baikal
who are practically Russified
."
Basayev further said an FSB agent (Khodov) had been sent undercover to the rebels to persuade them to carry out an attack on a target in North Ossetia's capital, Vladikavkaz, and that the group was allowed to enter the region with ease, because the FSB planned to capture them at their destination in Vladikavkaz. He also claimed that an unnamed hostage-taker had survived the siege and managed to escape.
in a normally fatal amount; the investigation cited the use of drugs as a reason for the militants’ ability to continue fighting despite being badly wounded and presumably in great pain.) In November 2004, Russian officials announced that 27 of the 32 hostage-takers had been identified. However, in September 2005, the lead prosecutor against Nur-Pashi Kulayev stated that only 22 of the 32 bodies of the captors had been identified, leading to further confusion over which identities have been confirmed.
Most of the suspects, aged 20–35, were identified as Ingush or residents of Ingushetia (some of them Chechen refugees
). At least five of the suspected hostage-takers were declared dead by Russian authorities before the seizure, while eight were known to have been previously arrested and then released, in some cases shortly before the Beslan attack.
Male
The male hostage-takers were tentatively identified by the Russian government as:
Female
In April 2005, the identity of the shahidka
female militants was revealed:
, born in Chechnya, was identified by former hostages as one of the hostage-takers. The state-controlled Channel One
showed fragments of Kulayev's interrogation in which he said his group was led by a Chechnya-born man nicknamed Polkovnik and by the North Ossetia native Vladimir Khodov. According to Kulayev, Polkovnik shot another militant and detonated two female suicide bombers because they objected to capturing children.
In May 2005, Kulayev was a defendant in a court in the republic of North Ossetia. He was charged with murder
, terrorism, kidnapping, and other crimes and pleaded guilty on seven of the counts; many former hostages denounced the trial as a "smoke screen" and "farce
". Some of the relatives of the victims, who used the trial in their attempts to accuse the authorities, even called for a pardon
for Kulayev so he can speak freely about what happened. The director of the FSB, Nikolai Patrushev, was summoned to give evidence, but he did not attend the trial. Ten days later, on May 26, 2006, Nur-Pashi Kulayev was sentenced to death, despite the official moratorium
on the death penalty in Russia, which was then immediately commuted to life in prison; no appeal was filed by either the defendant or prosecutor. Kulayev later disappeared in the Russian prison system. Following questions about whether Kulayev had been killed or died in prison, Russian government officials said in 2007 that he was alive and awaiting the start of his sentence.
group it would be an "objective investigation". On December 26, 2005, Russian prosecutors investigating the siege on the school declared that authorities had made no mistakes whatsoever.
, but cautiously agreed with an idea of a parliamentary investigation led by the State Duma, dominated by the pro-Kremlin parties.
In November 2004, the Interfax news agency reported Alexander Torshin, head of the parliamentary commission, as saying that there was evidence of involvement by "a foreign intelligence agency
" (he declined to say which). On December 22, 2006, the Russian parliamentary commission ended their investigation into the incident. Their report concluded that the number of gunmen who stormed the school was 32 and laid much blame on the North Ossetian police, stating that there was a severe shortcoming in security measures, but also criticized authorities for under-reporting the number of hostages involved. In addition, the commission said the attack on the school was premeditated by Chechen rebel leadership including the moderate leader Aslan Maskhadov. In another controversial move, the commission claimed that the shoot-out that ended the siege was instigated by the hostage-takers, not security forces. About the "grounded" decision to use flamethowers, Torshin said that "international law
does not prohibit using them against terrorists." Ella Kesayeva, an activist
who leads Beslan support group, suggested that the report was meant as a signal that Putin and his circle were no longer interested in having a discussion about crisis.
On August 28, 2006, Yuri Savelyev, Russian Member of Parliament
in the federal parliamentary inquiry panel, publicized his own report which he said is proving that Russian forces deliberately stormed the school using maximum force. According to Savelyev, a weapons and explosives expert, special forces fired rocket-propelled grenades without warning as a prelude to an armed assault, ignoring apparently ongoing negotiations. In February 2007, two members of the commission (Savelyev and Yuri Ivanov) denounced the investigation as a cover-up
, and the Kremlin's official version of events as fabricated. They refused to sign off on the Torshin's report.
ROVD (district militsiya
unit) were the only officials put on trial over the massacre
, accused of failing to stop gunmen seizing the school and charged with negligence
. On May 30, 2007, Pravoberezhny Court's judge granted an amnesty
to them. In response, a group of dozens local women then rioted and ransacked the courtroom, smashing windows, overturning furniture and tearing down a Russian flag. Victims' groups said the trial had been a whitewash
designed to protect their superiors from blame. The victims of the Beslan terror act said they are going to appeal against the court judgement.
In June 2007, a court in Kabardino-Balkaria
charged two Malgobeksky District
ROVD police officials (Mukhazhir Yevloyev and Akhmed Kotiyev) with negligence, accusing them of failing to prevent the attackers from setting up their training and staging camp in Ingushetia. The two pleaded innocent, the court said. The acquittal
verdict came in October 2007, and was upheld by the Supreme Court of Ingushetia in March 2008. The victims said they are going to appeal against the decision to the European Court for Human Rights.
groups. Soon after the crisis, the independent MP Vladimir Ryzhkov
blamed "the top leadership" of Russia. Initially, the European Union
also criticized the response.
Criticism, including by Beslan residents (the survivors and the relatives of the victims), centered on the allegations that the storming of the school was ruthless, citing the confirmed use of heavy weapons, such as tanks and Shmel flamethrowers (described by a source associated with the U.S. military as "just about the most vicious weapon you can imagine – igniting the air, sucking the oxygen
out of an enclosed area and creating a massive pressure wave crushing anything unfortunate enough to have lived through the conflagration"). a claim that the authorities flatly deny. Some human rights
activists claim that at least 80 percent of the hostages were killed by indiscriminate Russian fire. According to Felgenhauer, "it was not a hostage rescue operation... but an army operation aimed at wiping out the terrorists." David Satter
of the Hudson Institute
said the incident "presents a chilling portrait of the Russian leadership and its total disregard for human life".
The provincial government and police were criticized by the locals for having allowed the attack to take place, especially since police roadblock
s on the way to Beslan were removed shortly before the hostage taking. Many blamed rampant corruption allowing militants to simply bribe their way through the checkpoints (in fact, this was even what they openly boasted to their hostages), while others say the militants used the back roads used by smugglers
in collusion with police. Yulia Latynina
alleged that Major Gurazhev was captured after he approached the militants' truck to demand a bribe for what he thought was an oil-smuggling operation. It was also alleged the federal police knew of the time and place of the planned attack; according to internal police documents obtained by Novaya Gazeta
, the Moscow MVD knew about the hostage taking four hours in advance, having learned this from a militant captured in Chechnya. According to Basayev, the road to Beslan was cleared of roadblocks because the FSB planned to ambush
the group later, believing the rebels' aim was to seize the parliament of North Ossetia in Vladikavkaz.
Critics also charged that the authorities did not organize the siege properly, including failing to keep the scene secure from entry by civilians, while the emergency service
s were not prepared during the 52 hours of the crisis. The Russian government has been also heavily criticized by many of the local people who, days and even months after the siege, did not know whether their children were alive or dead (the hospitals were isolated from the outside world). Two months after the crisis, human remains and identity documents were found by a local driver Muran Katsanov in the garbage landfill
at the outskirts of Beslan; the discovery prompted further outrage.
In addition, there were serious accusations that federal officials had not earnestly tried to negotiate with the hostage-takers (including the alleged threat from Moscow to arrest President Dzasokhov if he came to negotiate) and deliberately provided incorrect and inconsistent reports of the situation to the media (detailed below).
on the commission, accused Torshin of "deliberate falsification".
A separate public inquiry by the North Ossetian parliament (headed by Kesayev) concluded on November 29, 2005, that both local and federal law enforcement agencies and officials mishandled the situation.
against Russia with the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). The applicants say their rights were violated both during the hostage-taking and the trials that followed. ECHR was flooded by a complaints against Russia, many of them from Chechnya, what the Human Rights Watch
called "the last hope for the victims".
has suggested that the Russian secret services must have been aware of the plot beforehand, and therefore that they must have themselves organized the attack as a false flag
operation. Before his death, Litvinenko alleged that because of the fact that the hostage-takers had previously been in FSB custody for committing terrorist attacks, it is inconceivable that they would have been released and still been able to carry out attacks independently. He said that they would only have been freed if they were of use to the FSB, and that even in the case that they were freed without being turned into FSB assets, they would be under a strict surveillance
regime that would not have allowed them to carry out the Beslan attack unnoticed. Some of the Mothers of Beslan have also alleged that the hostage taking was an inside job
, citing as evidence the fact that the militants used weapons that had been planted in the school prior to the incident. Ella Kesayeva, co-chair of the group Voice of Beslan has, similar to Alexander Litvinenko, drawn attention to how many of the hostage-takers were either released from government custody or evaded the authorities despite their high profiles right before the attacks occurred. Writing for the oppositional newspaper Novaya Gazeta
, she concluded that "the so-called Beslan terrorists were agents of our own special forces – UBOP [Center for Countering Extremism] and FSB."
and the BBC
), the crisis was not broadcast live by the three major state-owned Russian television networks. The two main state-owned broadcasters, Channel One and Rossiya, did not even interrupt their regular programming following the school seizure. After explosions and gunfire started on the third day, NTV Russia
(the main television channel owned by Gazprom
) shifted away from the scenes of mayhem to broadcast a World War II
soap opera
.
According to the poll by Ekho Moskvy radio station, 92% of the people polled said that Russian TV channels concealed parts of information.
Russian state-controlled television only reported official information about the number of hostages during the course of the crisis. The number of 354 people was persistently given, as initially stated by Lev Dzugayev, the press secretary
of Dzasokhov (after the crisis, Dzugayev was promoted and made Minister for Culture and Mass Communications of the republic) and Valery Andreyev, the chief of the republican FSB (though it was later claimed that Dzugayev only disseminated information given to him by "Russian presidential staff who were located in Beslan from September 1"). Torshin laid the blame squarely at Andreyev, for whom he reserved special scorn.
This deliberately false figure had grave consequences for the treatment of the hostages by their angered captors (hostage-takers were even reported saying "Maybe we should kill enough of you to get down to that number") and contributed to the declaration of "hunger strike". One inquiry has suggested that it may have prompted the militants to kill a group of male hostages who were shot on the first day. The government disinformation
also sparked the incidents of violence by the local residents, aware of the real numbers, against the members of Russian and foreign media.
On September 8, 2004, several leading Russian and international human rights organizations – including Amnesty International
, Human Rights Watch
, Memorial
and Moscow Helsinki Group
– issued a joint statement in which they pointed out the responsibility that Russian authorities bore in disseminating false information:
The Moscow daily Moskovskij Komsomolets ran a rubric headlined "Chronicle of Lies", detailing various initial reports put out by government officials about the hostage taking, which later turned out to be false.
after a brawl with two men who picked a fight with him in the Moscow Vnukovo Airport and sentenced to a 15-day arrest, and the chief of the Moscow bureau of the Arab TV channel Al Jazeera, who was framed into the possession of a round of ammunition at the airfield in Mineralnye Vody
.
The late Novaya Gazeta journalist Anna Politkovskaya
, who had negotiated during the 2002 Moscow siege, was twice prevented by the authorities from boarding a flight. When she eventually succeeded, she fell into a coma
after being poison
ed aboard an airplane bound to Rostov-on-Don
. American journalist Larisa Alexandrovna
of The Raw Story
has suggested that Politkovskaya might have been later murdered in Moscow
because she had discovered evidence of the Russian government's complicity in Beslan.
According to the report by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe
(OSCE), several correspondents were detained or otherwise harassed after arriving in Beslan (including Russians Anna Gorbatova and Oksana Semyonova from Novye Izvestia, Madina Shavlokhova from Moskovskij Komsomolets, Elena Milashina
from Novaya Gazeta, and Simon Ostrovskiy from The Moscow Times
). Several foreign journalists were also briefly detained, including a group of journalists from Polish
Gazeta Wyborcza
, French
Libération
and British The Guardian
. Many foreign journalists were exposed to pressure from the security forces and the materials were confiscated from TV crews from ZDF
and ARD
(Germany
), AP Television News
(USA), and Rustavi 2
(Georgia
). The crew of Rustavi 2 was arrested; the Georgian Minister of Health said that the correspondent Nana Lezhava, who had been kept for five days in the Russian pre-trial detention centers, had been poisoned with dangerous psychotropic drugs (like Politkovskaya, Lezhava passed out after being given a cup of tea). The crew from another Georgian TV channel Mze
was expelled from Beslan.
Raf Shakirov, chief editor of the Russia's leading Izvestia
newspaper, was forced to resign after criticism by the major shareholders of both style and content of the September 4, 2004 issue. In contrast to the less emotional coverage by other Russian newspapers, Izvestia had featured large pictures of dead or injured hostages. It also expressed doubts about the government's version of events.
In July 2007, the Mothers of Beslan asked the FSB to declassify video and audio archives on Beslan, saying there should be no secrets in the investigation. They did not receive any official answer to this request. However, the Mothers received anonymously
a video which they disclosed saying it might prove that the Russian security forces started the massacre by firing rocket-propelled grenades on the besieged building. The film had been kept secret by the authorities for nearly three years, before being officially released by the Mothers on September 4, 2007. The graphic film apparently shows the prosecutors and military experts surveying the unexploded shrapnel-based bombs of the militants and structural damage in the school in Beslan shortly after the massacre. Footage shows a large hole in the wall of the sports hall, with a man saying: "The hole in the wall is not from this [kind of] explosion. Apparently someone fired [there]," adding that many victims bear no sign of shrapnel wounds. In another scene filmed next morning, a uniformed investigator points out that most of the IEDs in the school actually did not go off, and then pays close attention to a hole in the floor, which he calls a "puncture of an explosive character".
mentality and said that the West wants to "pull the strings so that Russia won't raise its head."
The Russian government defended the use of tanks and other heavy weaponry, arguing that it was used only after surviving hostages escaped from the school. However, this contradicts the eyewitness accounts, including by the former hostages and reporters. According to the survivors and other witnesses many hostages were seriously wounded and could not possibly escape by themselves, while others were kept by the militants as human shield
s and moved through the building.
Deputy Prosecutor General of Russia
Nikolai Shepel, acting as deputy prosecutor at the trial of Kulayev, found no fault with the security forces in handling the hostage crisis: "According to the conclusions of the investigation, the expert commission did not find any violations that could be responsible for the harmful consequences." Shepel acknowledged that commandos fired flamethrowers, but said this could not have sparked the fire that caused most of deaths; he also said that the troops did not use napalm
during the attack.
To address doubts, Putin launched a Duma parliamentary investigation led by Alexander Torshin, resulting in the report which criticized the federal government only indirectly and instead put blame for "a whole number of blunders and shortcomings" on local authorities. The findings of the federal and the North Ossetian commissions differed widely in many main aspects. Deputy Prosecutor General Vladimir Kolesnikov
, sent by Putin in September 2005 to investigate the circumstances, concluded on the 30th of the same month that "the actions of the military personnel were justified, and there are no grounds to open a criminal investigation."
Also in 2005, previously unreleased documents by the national commission in Moscow were made available to Der Spiegel
. According to the paper, "instead of calling for self-criticism
in the wake of the disaster, the commission recommended the Russian government to crack down harder."
Five Ossetian and Ingush police officers were tried in the local courts; all of them were subsequently amnestied or acquitted in 2007. As of December 2009, none of the Russian federal officials at any rank or level suffered any consequences in connection with the Beslan events.
theory, the attackers hoped that the mostly Orthodox
Ossetians would attack their mostly-Muslim
Ingush and Chechen neighbours to seek revenge, encouraging ethnic and religious hatred and strife throughout the North Caucasus. North Ossetia and Ingushetia had previously been involved in a brief, but bloody conflict in 1992 over disputed land in the North Ossetian Prigorodny District
, leaving up to 1,000 dead and some 40,000 to 60,000 displaced person
s, mostly Ingush. Indeed, shortly after the Beslan massacre, 3,000 people demonstrated in Vladikavkaz calling for revenge against the ethnic Ingush.
The expected backlash against neighbouring nations failed to materialise on a massive scale (in one noted incident, a group of ethnic Ossetian soldiers led by a Russian officer detained two Chechen Spetsnaz
soldiers and executed one of them). In July 2007, however, the office of the presidential envoy for the Southern Federal District
Dmitry Kozak
announced that a North Ossetian armed group engaged in abduction
s as retaliation for the Beslan school hostage taking (the first rumours of such attacks were reported in the Russian and foreign press already during and just after the hostage crisis). FSB Lieutenant Colonel Alikhan Kalimatov, sent from Moscow to investigate these cases, was shot dead by unidentified gunmen in September 2007.
and miracle-maker Grigory Grabovoy
had promised he could resurrect
the killed children for a large sum of money. Grabovoy was arrested and indicted of fraud
in April 2006, amidst the accusations that he was being used by the government as a tool to discredit the Mothers of Beslan.
In January 2008, the Voice of Beslan group, which in the previous year had been ordered to disband by a court, was charged by Russian prosecutors with "extremism
" over their 2005 appeals to the European Parliament
to help establish international
investigation. This was soon followed with other charges, some of them relating to the 2007 court incident. As of February 2008, the group was charged in total of four different criminal cases.
leader Garry Kasparov
's top aide Marina Litvinovich, who runs the website
Pravda Beslana ("Truth about Beslan"), was savagely beaten by unidentified attackers on a Moscow street and told to "be careful". Nothing was stolen in the attack.
In September 2007, Taimuraz Chedzhemov, the lawyer representing the Mothers of Beslan who was seeking to prosecute Russian officials over the massacre, said he has pulled out of the case because of a death threat
to his family.
Russia's Patriarch Alexius II
's plans to build an Orthodox temple as part of the Beslan monument have caused a serious conflict between the Orthodox Church and the leadership of the Russian Muslims in 2007. Beslan victims organizations also spoke against the project and many in Beslan want the ruins of the school to be preserved, opposing the government plan of its demolition to begin with.
On September 1, 2005, the United Nations Children's Fund
(UNICEF) marked the first anniversary of the Beslan school tragedy by calling on all adults to shield children from war and conflict.
Maria Sharapova
along with many other female Russian tennis players wore black ribbons during the US Open 2004
in tribute to the tragedy.
Music
Books
"Tragedy in Beslan. Five years later. We remember…." EMERCOM.
"Beslan school tragedy." Directory of related articles from The Guardian
.
"В память о погибших..." City of Beslan.
The School. Feature by C.J. Chivers. Esquire
, June 2006, Volume 145, Issue 6. Last accessed November 16, 2009.
Chechen rebels' hostage history, BBC News
, September 1, 2004
Aching to Know, by Kim Murphy
, Los Angeles Times
, August 27, 2005.
Beslan Timeline: How the School Siege Unfolded, by Kelly McEvers, NPR, August 31, 2006
Pravda Beslana, public investigation of Beslan events (Beslan's Truth).
Voice of Beslan English translation
Hope for Beslan. Last accessed October 4, 2007
Day-by-day transcriptions from criminal trial , . machine translation. Last accessed July 17, 2006.
Memorial Page for the Victims of Beslan
Remembering Beslan: A Crime Against Humanity French humanitarian association "Solidarité Enfants de Beslan"
Ingush people
The Ingush are a native ethnic group of the North Caucasus, mostly inhabiting the Russian republic of Ingushetia. They refer to themselves as Ghalghai . The Ingush are predominantly Sunni Muslims and speak the Ingush language...
and Chechen
Chechen people
Chechens constitute the largest native ethnic group originating in the North Caucasus region. They refer to themselves as Noxçi . Also known as Sadiks , Gargareans, Malkhs...
Islamic militants took more than 1,100 people (including 777 children) hostage
Hostage
A hostage is a person or entity which is held by a captor. The original definition meant that this was handed over by one of two belligerent parties to the other or seized as security for the carrying out of an agreement, or as a preventive measure against certain acts of war...
on 1 September, at School Number One (SNO) in the town of Beslan
Beslan
Beslan is a town and the administrative center of Pravoberezhny District of the Republic of North Ossetia–Alania, Russia. In terms of population, Beslan is the third largest town in the republic behind Vladikavkaz and Mozdok...
, North Ossetia
North Ossetia-Alania
The Republic of North Ossetia–Alania is a federal subject of Russia . Its population according to the 2010 Census was 712,877.-Name:...
, an autonomous republic
Autonomous republic
An autonomous republic is a type of administrative division similar to a province. A significant number of autonomous republics can be found within the successor states of the Soviet Union, but the majority are located within Russia. Many of these republics were established during the Soviet...
in the North Caucasus
North Caucasus
The North Caucasus is the northern part of the Caucasus region between the Black and Caspian Seas and within European Russia. The term is also used as a synonym for the North Caucasus economic region of Russia....
region of the Russian Federation
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
. The hostage taking was carried out by the group Riyadus-Salikhin
Riyadus-Salikhin Reconnaissance and Sabotage Battalion of Chechen Martyrs
Riyad-us Saliheen is the name of a small "martyr" force of Islamic suicide attackers. Its original leader was the Chechen separatist commander Shamil Basayev...
, sent by the Chechen separatist warlord Shamil Basayev
Shamil Basayev
Shamil Salmanovich Basayev was a Chechen militant Islamist and a leader of the Chechen rebel movement.Starting as a field commander in the Transcaucasus, Basayev led guerrilla campaigns against the Russian troops for years, as well as launching mass-hostage takings of civilians, with his goal...
who issued demands of an end to the Second Chechen War
Second Chechen War
The Second Chechen War, in a later phase better known as the War in the North Caucasus, was launched by the Russian Federation starting 26 August 1999, in response to the Invasion of Dagestan by the Islamic International Peacekeeping Brigade ....
and Russian withdrawal from Chechnya. On the third day of the standoff
Impasse
A bargaining impasse occurs when the two sides negotiating an agreement are unable to reach an agreement and become deadlocked. An impasse is almost invariably mutually harmful, either as a result of direct action which may be taken such as a strike in employment negotiation or sanctions/military...
, Russian security forces were forced to storm the building, using tank
Tank
A tank is a tracked, armoured fighting vehicle designed for front-line combat which combines operational mobility, tactical offensive, and defensive capabilities...
s to make an entrance in the near gallery, after several explosions happened inside the gym. Incendiary rockets and other heavy weapons were used later when hostage rescue was over. Ultimately, at least 334 hostages were killed, including 186 children; hundreds more were injured and many were reported missing. Russian special forces lost 21 men in the storm.
The tragedy
Tragedy (event)
A tragedy is an event in which one or more losses, usually of human life, occurs that is viewed as mournful. Such an event is said to be tragic....
led to security and political repercussions in Russia, most notably a series of federal government reforms consolidating power in the Kremlin
Moscow Kremlin
The Moscow Kremlin , sometimes referred to as simply The Kremlin, is a historic fortified complex at the heart of Moscow, overlooking the Moskva River , Saint Basil's Cathedral and Red Square and the Alexander Garden...
and strengthening of the powers of the President of Russia. According to American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
NGO
Non-governmental organization
A non-governmental organization is a legally constituted organization created by natural or legal persons that operates independently from any government. The term originated from the United Nations , and is normally used to refer to organizations that do not form part of the government and are...
Freedom House
Freedom House
Freedom House is an international non-governmental organization based in Washington, D.C. that conducts research and advocacy on democracy, political freedom and human rights...
, these reforms consolidated Russia as a politically non-free, authoritarian state since the mid-2000s. As of 2011, there are many aspects of the crisis still in dispute, including how many militants were involved, their preparations, and whether some of them had escaped. Questions about the government's management of the crisis have also persisted, including disinformation
Disinformation
Disinformation is intentionally false or inaccurate information that is spread deliberately. For this reason, it is synonymous with and sometimes called black propaganda. It is an act of deception and false statements to convince someone of untruth...
and censorship
Censorship
thumb|[[Book burning]] following the [[1973 Chilean coup d'état|1973 coup]] that installed the [[Military government of Chile |Pinochet regime]] in Chile...
in news media
News media
The news media are those elements of the mass media that focus on delivering news to the general public or a target public.These include print media , broadcast news , and more recently the Internet .-Etymology:A medium is a carrier of something...
, repression of journalists who rushed to Beslan, the nature and content of negotiation
Negotiation
Negotiation is a dialogue between two or more people or parties, intended to reach an understanding, resolve point of difference, or gain advantage in outcome of dialogue, to produce an agreement upon courses of action, to bargain for individual or collective advantage, to craft outcomes to satisfy...
s with the militants, the responsibility for the bloody outcome, and the government's use of possibly excessive force.
Background
CominternComintern
The Communist International, abbreviated as Comintern, also known as the Third International, was an international communist organization initiated in Moscow during March 1919...
Street SNO was one of seven schools in Beslan, a town of around 35,000 people in the republic of North Ossetia-Alania, Russian Caucasus
Caucasus
The Caucasus, also Caucas or Caucasia , is a geopolitical region at the border of Europe and Asia, and situated between the Black and the Caspian sea...
. The school, located right next to the district police station
Police station
A police station or station house is a building which serves to accommodate police officers and other members of staff. These buildings often contain offices and accommodation for personnel and vehicles, along with locker rooms, temporary holding cells and interview/interrogation rooms.- Facilities...
, had around 60 teachers and more than 800 students. Its gym
Gym
The word γυμνάσιον was used in Ancient Greece, that mean a locality for both physical and intellectual education of young men...
nasium, where most of the estimated 1,200 hostages were to spend 52 hours of captivity, was a recent addition, measuring 10 metres wide and 25 metres long. There were reports that the men disguised as repairmen had concealed weapons and explosives in the school sometime during July 2004, but this was later officially refuted. However, several witnesses have since testified
Testimony
In law and in religion, testimony is a solemn attestation as to the truth of a matter. All testimonies should be well thought out and truthful. It was the custom in Ancient Rome for the men to place their right hand on a Bible when taking an oath...
they were made to help their captors remove the weapons from the caches hidden in the school. There were also claims that the militants or their accomplices constructed a "sniper
Sniper
A sniper is a marksman who shoots targets from concealed positions or distances exceeding the capabilities of regular personnel. Snipers typically have specialized training and distinct high-precision rifles....
's nest" position on the sports hall roof in advance.
It was also reported that the SNO in Beslan was used by Ossetian militia
Militia
The term militia is commonly used today to refer to a military force composed of ordinary citizens to provide defense, emergency law enforcement, or paramilitary service, in times of emergency without being paid a regular salary or committed to a fixed term of service. It is a polyseme with...
forces as an internment
Internment
Internment is the imprisonment or confinement of people, commonly in large groups, without trial. The Oxford English Dictionary gives the meaning as: "The action of 'interning'; confinement within the limits of a country or place." Most modern usage is about individuals, and there is a distinction...
camp for ethnic Ingush civilians in late 1992 during the short but bloody Ingush–Ossetian East Prigorodny conflict
East Prigorodny conflict
The East Prigorodny conflict was an inter-ethnic conflict in the eastern part of the Prigorodny district in the Republic of North Ossetia-Alania, which started in 1989 and developed, in 1992, into a brief ethnic war between local Ingush and Ossetian paramilitary forces.According to Helsinki Human...
, in which hundreds of Ingush residents of North Ossetia lost their lives or disappeared during the week-long hostilities, and thus the school was arguably chosen as the target of the attack by the mostly-Ingush rebel group because of this connection. Some believe that the entire siege was cleverly crafted by the Russian government so as to serve as a pretense for consolidating and expanding the power of Putin's Kremlin. According to media reports, SNO was one of several buildings in which the Ossetians had held Ingush citizens, many of them women and children; the hostages sat on the gymnasium floor, deprived of food and water, just as the Ossetians would do in the 2004 siege, and several male hostages were hauled outside and executed. Beslan, like the major Army airbase
Airbase
An airbase is a military airfield that provides basing and support of military aircraft....
in nearby Mozdok, was also site of an airfield used by the Russian military aviation
Military aviation
Military aviation is the use of aircraft and other flying machines for the purposes of conducting or enabling warfare, including national airlift capacity to provide logistical supply to forces stationed in a theater or along a front. Air power includes the national means of conducting such...
for its combat operation in the nearby republic of Chechnya
Chechnya
The Chechen Republic , commonly referred to as Chechnya , also spelled Chechnia or Chechenia, sometimes referred to as Ichkeria , is a federal subject of Russia . It is located in the southeastern part of Europe in the Northern Caucasus mountains. The capital of the republic is the city of Grozny...
since 1994.
Day one
The seizing of the school took place on September 1—the traditional start of the Russian school year, referred to as "First September" or Knowledge DayKnowledge Day
Knowledge Day , often simply called 1st of September, is the day when the school year traditionally starts in Russia and many other former Soviet republics. This day also marks the end of summer and the beginning of autumn. It has special significance for the incoming class of first graders who...
. On this day, the children, accompanied by their parents and other relatives, attend ceremonies hosted by their school. Because of the pupils and family members attending the Day of Knowledge festivities, the number of people in the schools was considerably higher than usual for a normal school day. Early in the morning, a group of several dozen heavily-armed Islamic guerrillas left a forest encampment located in the vicinity of the village of Psedakh in the neighbouring republic of Ingushetia
Ingushetia
The Republic of Ingushetia is a federal subject of Russia , located in the North Caucasus region with its capital at Magas. In terms of area, the republic is the smallest of Russia's federal subjects except for the two federal cities, Moscow and Saint Petersburg...
, east of North Ossetia and west of war-torn Chechnya. The rebels wore green military camouflage
Military camouflage
Military camouflage is one of many means of deceiving an enemy. In practice, it is the application of colour and materials to battledress and military equipment to conceal them from visual observation. The French slang word camouflage came into common English usage during World War I when the...
and black balaclava masks, and in some cases were also wearing explosive belt
Explosive belt
An explosive belt is an improvised explosive device, a belt or a vest packed with explosives and armed with a detonator, worn by suicide bombers...
s and explosive underwear. On the way to Beslan, on a country road near the North Ossetian village of Khurikau, they had captured an Ingush police officer, Major Sultan Gurazhev. Gurazhev escaped after reaching the town and went to the district police department to inform that his duty handgun and badge
Badge
A badge is a device or fashion accessory, often containing the insignia of an organization, which is presented or displayed to indicate some feat of service, a special accomplishment, a symbol of authority granted by taking an oath , a sign of legitimate employment or student status, or as a simple...
were taken away.
At 09:11 local time, the rebels arrived at Beslan in a GAZelle
GAZelle
The GAZelle is a series of mid-sized trucks, vans and buses made by Russian car manufacturer GAZ. GAZelles are similar to the later launched GAZ-2215/GAZ-2752 Sobol and GAZ-3310 Valdai line of vans and light trucks...
police van and a GAZ-66
GAZ-66
The GAZ-66 is a Russian 4x4 all-road military truck produced by GAZ. It was the main transport vehicle for motorized infantry of the Soviet Army and is still employed in former Soviet Union countries...
military truck. Many witnesses and independent experts claim that there were, in fact, two groups of attackers, and that the first group was already at the school when the second group arrived by truck. At first, some at the school mistook the guerrillas for Russian special forces practicing a security drill. However, the attackers soon began shooting in the air and forcing everybody from the school grounds into the building. During the initial chaos, up to 50 people managed to flee and alert authorities to the situation. A number of people also managed to hide in the boiler
Boiler
A boiler is a closed vessel in which water or other fluid is heated. The heated or vaporized fluid exits the boiler for use in various processes or heating applications.-Materials:...
room. After an exchange of gunfire with police and an armed local civilian, in which it was reported one attacker was shot dead and two were wounded, the militants seized the school building. Reports of the death toll from this shootout ranged from two to eight people, while more than a dozen people were injured.
The attackers took approximately 1,200 hostages (the number of hostages was initially downplayed by the government to merely 200–400, and then for an unknown reason announced to be exactly 354; in 2005, their number was put at 1,128). They herded their captives into the school's gym and confiscated all their mobile phone
Mobile phone
A mobile phone is a device which can make and receive telephone calls over a radio link whilst moving around a wide geographic area. It does so by connecting to a cellular network provided by a mobile network operator...
s under threat of death, and ordered everyone to speak in Russian
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
and only when spoken to. When a father named Ruslan Betrozov stood to calm people and repeat the rules in the local language, Ossetic
Ossetic language
Ossetian , also sometimes called Ossete, is an East Iranian language spoken in Ossetia, a region on the slopes of the Caucasus Mountains....
, a gunman approached him, asked Betrozov if he was done, and then shot him in the head. Another father named Vadim Bolloyev, who refused to kneel, was also shot by a captor and then bled to death. Their bodies were dragged from the sports hall; this left a trail of blood visible in the video later made by the hostage-takers.
After gathering the hostages in the gym, the attackers singled out among the male teachers, school employees and fathers the 15–20 strongest adults they apparently thought might represent a threat, and took them into a corridor next to the cafeteria
Cafeteria
A cafeteria is a type of food service location in which there is little or no waiting staff table service, whether a restaurant or within an institution such as a large office building or school; a school dining location is also referred to as a dining hall or canteen...
on the second floor, where soon a deadly blast took place. Apparently an explosive belt on one of the female bombers detonated, killing another female bomber (it was also claimed the second woman died from a bullet wound) and several of the selected hostages, as well as mortally injuring one male hostage-taker. According to the version presented by the surviving hostage-taker, the blast was actually triggered by the "Polkovnik
Polkovnik
Polkovnik is often a military rank in Slavic countries which corresponds to a colonel in English-speaking states. However, in the Ukraine, polkovnyk was an administrative rank similar to a governor...
", the group leader, when he set off the bomb by remote control
Remote control
A remote control is a component of an electronics device, most commonly a television set, used for operating the television device wirelessly from a short line-of-sight distance.The remote control is usually contracted to remote...
to kill those who openly disagreed about the child hostages and intimidate other possible dissent
Dissent
Dissent is a sentiment or philosophy of non-agreement or opposition to a prevailing idea or an entity...
ers. The hostages from this group who were still alive were then ordered to lie down and shot with automatic rifle
Automatic rifle
Automatic rifle is a term generally used to describe a semi-automatic rifle chambered for a rifle cartridge, capable of delivering both semi- and full automatic fire...
by another gunman; all but one of them was killed. The militants then forced other hostages to throw the bodies out of the building and to wash the blood off the floor. A hostage named Aslan Kudzayev, who was forced to throw the bodies, escaped by jumping out the window; the authorities briefly detained him as a suspected hostage-taker. Karen Mdinaradze, the Alania
Alania
Alania may refer to:*Alania, the medieval state of the Alans or Alani people in the North Caucasus*The short name of the modern North Ossetia-Alania, one of the Caucasian republics in the Russian Federation...
football team's cameraman, survived the explosion as well as the shooting; when discovered to be still alive, he was allowed to return to the sports hall, where he lost consciousness.
Beginning of the siege
A security cordon was soon established around the school, consisting of the Russian police (militsiyaMilitsiya
Militsiya or militia is used as an official name of the civilian police in several former communist states, despite its original military connotation...
), Internal Troops
Internal Troops
The Internal Troops, full name Internal Troops of the Ministry for Internal Affairs ; alternatively translated as "Interior " is a paramilitary gendarmerie-like force in the now-defunct Soviet Union and its successor countries, particularly, in Russia, Ukraine, Georgia and Azerbaijan...
, and Russian Army
Russian Ground Forces
The Russian Ground Forces are the land forces of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, formed from parts of the collapsing Soviet Army in 1992. The formation of these forces posed economic challenges after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and required reforms to professionalize the force...
forces; spetsnaz
Spetsnaz
Spetsnaz, Specnaz tr: Voyska specialnogo naznacheniya; ) is an umbrella term for any special forces in Russian, literally "force of special purpose"...
, including the elite Alfa
Alpha Group
The Alpha Group , is an elite component of Russia's Spetsnaz as well as the dedicated counter-terrorism unit of the Federal Security Service...
and Vympel
Vympel
Vympel , also known as KGB Directorate "B" ,Vega Group or Spetsgruppa V, Group B is a Russian special forces unit....
units of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB); and the OMON
OMON
OMOH is a generic name for the system of special units of militsiya within the Russian and earlier the Soviet MVD...
special units of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs
Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs
The Ministerstvo Vnutrennikh Del is the interior ministry of Russia. Its predecessor was founded in 1802 by Alexander I in Imperial Russia...
(MVD). A line of three apartment buildings facing the school gym was evacuated and taken over by the special forces. The perimeter
Perimeter
A perimeter is a path that surrounds an area. The word comes from the Greek peri and meter . The term may be used either for the path or its length - it can be thought of as the length of the outline of a shape. The perimeter of a circular area is called circumference.- Practical uses :Calculating...
they made was within 225 metres (738.2 ft) of the school, inside the range of the militants' grenade launcher
Grenade launcher
A grenade launcher or grenade discharger is a weapon that launches a grenade with more accuracy, higher velocity, and to greater distances than a soldier could throw it by hand....
s. No fire-fighting equipment was in position and, despite the previous experiences of the 2002 Moscow theater hostage crisis
Moscow theater hostage crisis
The Moscow theater hostage crisis, also known as the 2002 Nord-Ost siege, was the seizure of the crowded Dubrovka Theater on 23 October 2002 by some 40 to 50 armed Chechens who claimed allegiance to the Islamist militant separatist movement in Chechnya. They took 850 hostages and demanded the...
, there were few ambulance
Ambulance
An ambulance is a vehicle for transportation of sick or injured people to, from or between places of treatment for an illness or injury, and in some instances will also provide out of hospital medical care to the patient...
s ready. The chaos was worsened by the presence of Ossetian volunteer militiamen (opolchentsy) and armed civilians among the crowds of relatives who had gathered at the scene; there were perhaps as many as 5,000 of them.
The attackers mined the gym and the rest of the building with improvised explosive device
Improvised explosive device
An improvised explosive device , also known as a roadside bomb, is a homemade bomb constructed and deployed in ways other than in conventional military action...
s (IEDs), and surrounded it with tripwires
Booby trap
A booby trap is a device designed to harm or surprise a person, unknowingly triggered by the presence or actions of the victim. As the word trap implies, they often have some form of bait designed to lure the victim towards it. However, in other cases the device is placed on busy roads or is...
. In a further bid to deter rescue attempts, they threatened to kill 50 hostages for every one of their own members killed by the police, and to kill 20 hostages for every gunman injured. They also threatened to blow up the school if government forces attacked. To avoid being overwhelmed by gas attack like their comrades in the 2002 Moscow hostage crisis, insurgents quickly smashed the school's windows. The captors prevented hostages from eating and drinking (calling this a "hunger strike
Hunger strike
A hunger strike is a method of non-violent resistance or pressure in which participants fast as an act of political protest, or to provoke feelings of guilt in others, usually with the objective to achieve a specific goal, such as a policy change. Most hunger strikers will take liquids but not...
", which they said they joined too) until North Ossetia's President Alexander Dzasokhov
Alexander Dzasokhov
Alexander Dzasokhov is the former head of the Republic of North Ossetia-Alania.He was born April 3, 1934 in Vladikavkaz, graduated in 1957 from the North Caucasus Mining Metallurgical Institute and holds a doctorate in politics. From 1992 - 1993, he was a people's deputy of Russian Federation and...
would arrive to negotiate with them. However, the FSB set up their own crisis headquarters from which Dzasokhov was excluded, and threatened to arrest him if he tried to go to the school.
The Russian government announced that it would not use force to rescue the hostages, and negotiations towards a peaceful resolution took place on the first and second days, at first led by Leonid Roshal
Leonid Roshal
Leonid Mikhailovich Roshal is a noted pediatrician from Moscow, Russia, expert for World Health Organization, chairman of International Charity Fund to Help Children in Disasters and Wars....
, a pediatrician whom the hostage-takers had reportedly asked for by name (Roshal had helped negotiate the release of children in the 2002 Moscow siege, but also had given advice to the Russian security services as they prepared to storm the theater, for which he received the Hero of Russia award). However, a witness statement in the court indicated that the Russian negotiators confused Roshal with Vladimir Rushailo
Vladimir Rushailo
Vladimir Borisovich Rushailo is a Russian politician.From 1999 to 2001, he was the Interior Minister of Russia, and Secretary of Security Council from 2001 to 2004. As the Minister of the Interior, he was charged with overseeing the security of sensitive internal sites and materials such as...
, a Russian security official. According to Savelyev's report, the official ("civilian") headquarters was looking for a peaceful resolution of the situation at the same time when the secret ("heavy") headquarters set up by the FSB was preparing the assault. Savelyev wrote that in many ways the "heavies" restricted the actions of the "civilians", in particular in their attempts to negotiate with the militants.
At Russia's request, a special meeting of the United Nations Security Council
United Nations Security Council
The United Nations Security Council is one of the principal organs of the United Nations and is charged with the maintenance of international peace and security. Its powers, outlined in the United Nations Charter, include the establishment of peacekeeping operations, the establishment of...
was convened on the evening of 1 September, at which the council members demanded "the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages of the terrorist attack". U.S.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
President
President of the United States
The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....
George W. Bush
George W. Bush
George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....
made a statement offering "support in any form" to Russia.
Day two
On 2 September 2004, negotiations between Roshal and the hostage-takers proved unsuccessful, and they refused to allow food, water, and medicine to be taken in for the hostages, or for the bodies of the dead to be removed from the front of the school. At noon, FSB First Deputy Director, Colonel General Vladimir PronichevVladimir Pronichev
General of the Army Vladimir Yegorovich Pronichev is the current head of the Border Guard Service of the Russian Federation. Pronichev also holds the title of First Deputy Director of the Federal Security Service , the successor organization to KGB....
showed Dzasokhov a decree
Decree
A decree is a rule of law issued by a head of state , according to certain procedures . It has the force of law...
signed by the Prime Minister of Russia
Prime Minister of Russia
The Chairman of the Government of the Russian Federation The use of the term "Prime Minister" is strictly informal and is not allowed for by the Russian Constitution and other laws....
Mikhail Fradkov
Mikhail Fradkov
Mikhail Yefimovich Fradkov is a Russian politician and statesman who was the Prime Minister of Russia from March 2004 to September 2007. Fradkov has been the head of Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service since 2007.-Early life:...
appointing North Ossetian FSB chief Major General Valery Andreyev as head of the operational headquarters. In April 2005, however, a Moscow News
Moscow News
The Moscow News, which began publication in 1930, is Russia’s oldest English-language publication newspaper. Many of its feature articles used to be translated from the now defunct Russian Moskovskiye Novosti.-History:...
journalist received photocopies of the interview protocols
Protocol (diplomacy)
In international politics, protocol is the etiquette of diplomacy and affairs of state.A protocol is a rule which guides how an activity should be performed, especially in the field of diplomacy. In diplomatic services and governmental fields of endeavor protocols are often unwritten guidelines...
of Dzasokhov and Andreyev by investigators that revealed that two headquarters had been formed in Beslan: a formal one, upon which was laid all responsibility, and a secret one ("heavies"), which made the real decisions, and at which Andreyev had never been in charge.
The Russian government downplayed the numbers, repeatedly stating there were only 354 hostages; this reportedly angered the hostage-takers who further mistreated their captives. Several officials also said there appeared to be only 15 to 20 militants in the school. The crisis was met with a near-total silence from then-President of Russia Vladimir Putin
Vladimir Putin
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin served as the second President of the Russian Federation and is the current Prime Minister of Russia, as well as chairman of United Russia and Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Union of Russia and Belarus. He became acting President on 31 December 1999, when...
and the rest of Russia's political leaders. Only on the second day did Putin make his first public comment on the siege during a meeting in Moscow with King Abdullah II of Jordan
Abdullah II of Jordan
Abdullah II ibn al-Hussein is the reigning King of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. He ascended the throne on 7 February 1999 after the death of his father King Hussein. King Abdullah, whose mother is Princess Muna al-Hussein, is a member of the Hashemite family...
: "Our main task, of course, is to save the lives and health of those who became hostages. All actions by our forces involved in rescuing the hostages will be dedicated exclusively to this task." It was the only public statement by Putin about the crisis until one day after its bloody end. In protest, several people at the scene raised signs reading: "Putin! Release our children! Meet their demands!" and "Putin! There are at least 800 hostages!" The locals also said they would not allow any storming or "poisoning of their children" (a clear allusion to the Moscow hostage crisis chemical agent
Moscow hostage crisis chemical agent
The chemical agent used in the Moscow theatre hostage crisis has never been definitively revealed by the Russian authorities, though many possible identities have been speculated...
).
In the afternoon, the gunmen allowed Ruslan Aushev
Ruslan Aushev
Ruslan Sultanovich Aushev was the president of Ingushetia from March 1993 to December 2001. He was reportedly the youngest officer in the Soviet army to reach the rank of Lieutenant General. He received the Gold Star of the Hero of the Soviet Union on May 7, 1982...
, respected ex-President of Ingushetia
President of Ingushetia
The President of the Republic of Ingushetia is the highest office within the Government of Ingushetia.-Presidents of Ingushetia:*Ruslan Aushev *Murat Zyazikov *Yunus-bek Yevkurov...
and retired Soviet Army
Soviet Army
The Soviet Army is the name given to the main part of the Armed Forces of the Soviet Union between 1946 and 1992. Previously, it had been known as the Red Army. Informally, Армия referred to all the MOD armed forces, except, in some cases, the Soviet Navy.This article covers the Soviet Ground...
general, to enter the school building and agreed to release 11 nursing women and all 15 baby children personally to him. The women's older children were left behind and one mother refused to leave, so Aushev carried out her child instead. The rebels gave Aushev a video tape made in the school and a note with demands from their purported leader, Shamil Basayev, who was not himself present in Beslan. The existence of the note was kept secret by the Russian authorities, while the tape was declared as being "empty" (later this turned out to be false, too). It was falsely announced that the hostage-takers made no demands. In the note, Basayev demanded recognition of a "formal independence
Independence
Independence is a condition of a nation, country, or state in which its residents and population, or some portion thereof, exercise self-government, and usually sovereignty, over its territory....
for Chechnya" in the frame of the Commonwealth of Independent States
Commonwealth of Independent States
The Commonwealth of Independent States is a regional organization whose participating countries are former Soviet Republics, formed during the breakup of the Soviet Union....
. He also said that although the Chechen separatists "had played no part" in the Russian apartment bombings of 1999
Russian apartment bombings
The Russian apartment bombings were a series of explosions that hit four apartment blocks in the Russian cities of Buynaksk, Moscow, and Volgodonsk in September 1999, killing 293 people and injuring 651. The explosions occurred in Buynaksk on 4 September, Moscow on 9 and 13 September, and...
, they would now publicly take responsibility for them if needed. Some Russian officials and state-controlled media later attacked Aushev for entering the school, accusing him of colluding with the hostage-takers.
The lack of food and water took its toll on the young children, many of whom were forced to stand for long periods in the hot, tightly-packed gym. Many children took off their clothing because of the sweltering heat within the gymnasium, which led to rumors of sexual impropriety, though the hostages later explained it was merely due to the stifling heat and being denied any water. Many children fainted, and parents feared they would die. Some hostages drank their own urine
Urine
Urine is a typically sterile liquid by-product of the body that is secreted by the kidneys through a process called urination and excreted through the urethra. Cellular metabolism generates numerous by-products, many rich in nitrogen, that require elimination from the bloodstream...
. Occasionally, the militants (many of whom took off their masks) took out some of the unconscious children and poured water on their heads before returning them to the sports hall. Later in the day, some adults also started to faint from fatigue and thirst. Because of the conditions in the gym, when the explosion and gun battle began on the third day, many of the surviving children were so fatigued that they were barely able to flee from the carnage.
At around 15:30, two grenade
Grenade
A grenade is a small explosive device that is projected a safe distance away by its user. Soldiers called grenadiers specialize in the use of grenades. The term hand grenade refers any grenade designed to be hand thrown. Grenade Launchers are firearms designed to fire explosive projectile grenades...
s were fired approximately ten minutes apart by the militants at security forces outside the school, setting a police car ablaze and injuring one officer, but the Russian forces did not return fire. As the day and night wore on, the combination of stress
Stress (medicine)
Stress is a term in psychology and biology, borrowed from physics and engineering and first used in the biological context in the 1930s, which has in more recent decades become commonly used in popular parlance...
and sleep deprivation
Sleep deprivation
Sleep deprivation is the condition of not having enough sleep; it can be either chronic or acute. A chronic sleep-restricted state can cause fatigue, daytime sleepiness, clumsiness and weight loss or weight gain. It adversely affects the brain and cognitive function. Few studies have compared the...
—and possibly drug withdrawal
Withdrawal
Withdrawal can refer to any sort of separation, but is most commonly used to describe the group of symptoms that occurs upon the abrupt discontinuation/separation or a decrease in dosage of the intake of medications, recreational drugs, and alcohol...
—made the hostage-takers increasingly hysterical
Hysteria
Hysteria, in its colloquial use, describes unmanageable emotional excesses. People who are "hysterical" often lose self-control due to an overwhelming fear that may be caused by multiple events in one's past that involved some sort of severe conflict; the fear can be centered on a body part, or,...
and unpredictable. The crying of the children irritated them, and on several occasions crying children and their mothers were threatened with being shot if they would not stop crying. Russian authorities claimed that the hostage-takers had "listened to German heavy metal group Rammstein
Rammstein
Rammstein is a German Neue Deutsche Härte band from Berlin, formed in 1994. The band consists of members Till Lindemann , Richard Z. Kruspe , Paul H. Landers , Oliver "Ollie" Riedel , Christoph "Doom" Schneider and Christian "Flake" Lorenz...
on personal stereos
Boombox
Boombox is a colloquial expression for a portable cassette or CD player. Other terms known are ghetto blaster, jambox, or radio-cassette. It is a device capable of receiving radio stations and playing recorded music , usually at relatively high volume...
during the siege to keep themselves edgy and fired up." (Rammstein had previously come under fire following the Columbine High School massacre
Columbine High School massacre
The Columbine High School massacre occurred on Tuesday, April 20, 1999, at Columbine High School in Columbine, an unincorporated area of Jefferson County, Colorado, United States, near Denver and Littleton. Two senior students, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, embarked on a massacre, killing 12...
, and again in 2007 after the Jokela High School shooting.)
Overnight, a police officer was injured by shots fired from the school. Talks were broken off, then resumed the next day.
Day three
Early on the third day, Ruslan Aushev, Alexander Dzasokhov, North Ossetia's ParliamentParliament
A parliament is a legislature, especially in those countries whose system of government is based on the Westminster system modeled after that of the United Kingdom. The name is derived from the French , the action of parler : a parlement is a discussion. The term came to mean a meeting at which...
Chairman Taymuraz Mansurov, and First Deputy Chairman Izrail Totoonti together made contact with President of Ichkeria
President of Ichkeria
This is a list of Presidents of the unrecognised Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, a pro-independence movement that controlled most of Chechnya from 1991 to 1999...
Aslan Maskhadov
Aslan Maskhadov
Aslan Aliyevich Maskhadov was a leader of the Chechen separatist movement and the third President of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria.He was credited by many with the Chechen victory in the First Chechen War, which allowed for the...
, a Chechen separatist leader fighting a guerrilla war in Chechnya. Totoonti said that both Maskhadov and his Western-based emissary Akhmed Zakayev
Akhmed Zakayev
Akhmed Khalidovich Zakayev is the former Deputy Prime Minister and the current Prime Minister of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria , which is unrecognised by other countries...
declared they were ready to fly to Beslan to negotiate with the militants, which was later confirmed by Zakayev. Totoonti said that Maskhadov's sole demand was his unhindered passage to the school; however, the assault began one hour after the agreement on his arrival was made. He also mentioned that journalists from Al Jazeera
Al Jazeera
Al Jazeera is an independent broadcaster owned by the state of Qatar through the Qatar Media Corporation and headquartered in Doha, Qatar...
television offered for three days to participate in the negotiations and enter the school even as hostages, "but their services were not needed by anyone."
Russian presidential advisor and former police general, an ethnic Chechen Aslambek Aslakhanov
Aslambek Aslakhanov
Aslambek Akhmedovich Aslakhanov is the State Duma deputy from Chechnya, advisor and former aide to Russian president Vladimir Putin.He is a retired General of the MVD.- External links :...
, was also said to be close to breakthrough in the secret negotiations. By the time he left Moscow on the second day, Aslakhanov had accumulated the names of more than 700 well-known Russian figures who were volunteering to enter the school as hostages in exchange for the release of children. Aslakhanov said the hostage-takers agreed to allow him to enter the school the next day at 3 p.m.. Two hours before this, however, the storming began.
The first explosions and the fire in the gymnasium
Around 13:00 on September 3, 2004, it was agreed to allow four Ministry of the Emergency Situations medical workers in two ambulances to remove 20 bodies from the school grounds, as well as to bring the corpse of the killed rebel to the school. However, at 13:03, when the paramedicParamedic
A paramedic is a healthcare professional that works in emergency medical situations. Paramedics provide advanced levels of care for medical emergencies and trauma. The majority of paramedics are based in the field in ambulances, emergency response vehicles, or in specialist mobile units such as...
s approached the school, an explosion was heard from the gymnasium. The hostage-takers then opened fire, killing two of them. The other two took cover behind their vehicle.
The second, "strange-sounding", explosion was heard 22 seconds later. At 13:05 the fire on the roof of the sports hall started and soon the burning rafters and roofing fell onto the hostages below, many of them injured but still living. Eventually, the entire roof collapsed, turning the room into an inferno. The flames reportedly killed some 160 people (more than half of all hostage fatalities).
There are several widely conflicting versions regarding the source and nature of the explosions:
- The first theory claims that the cause of the firing and the subsequent storming of the school had been an accidental explosion. This was voiced, among others, by Aslambek Aslakhanov and Ruslan Aushev.
- According to the early official version, one of the bombs had been insecurely attached with adhesive tape, and had fallen and then exploded. However, no one seems to have seen this happen.
- Aushev said that an initial explosion was set off by a hostage-taker accidentally tripping over a wire. As a result, armed civilians, some of them apparently fathers of the hostages, started shooting. Aushev said no security forces or captors were shooting at this point, but the gunfire led the militants to believe that the school was being stormed.
- In a similar version, Igor Senin, president of the association of Alfa veterans, said that somebody in the school building set off a hand grenade, probably by accident, after which the militants decided they were being attacked and opened fire.
- According to the December 2005 report by Stanislav Kesayev, deputy speaker of North Ossetian parliament, some witnesses said a federal forces sniper shot a militant whose foot was on a dead man's switchDead man's switchA dead man's switch is a switch that is automatically operated in case the human operator becomes incapacitated, such as through death or loss of consciousness....
detonatorDetonatorA detonator is a device used to trigger an explosive device. Detonators can be chemically, mechanically, or electrically initiated, the latter two being the most common....
, triggering the first blast. The captured hostage-taker Nur-Pashi KulayevNur-Pashi KulayevNur-Pashi Kulayev , a native of Engenoi, Chechnya, is thought to be the sole survivor of the 32 hostage-takers in the 2004 Beslan school hostage crisis, although Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev denied the claim, stating that one other escaped....
has testified to this, while a local policewoman and hostage Fatima Dudiyeva said she was shot in the hand "from outside" just before the explosion. Kesayev's commission actually rejected the sniper shot theory, and said there were three blasts: two small explosions at 13:03, followed by the big one at 13:29. - Another theory was put forward in August 2006 by a DumaDumaA Duma is any of various representative assemblies in modern Russia and Russian history. The State Duma in the Russian Empire and Russian Federation corresponds to the lower house of the parliament. Simply it is a form of Russian governmental institution, that was formed during the reign of the...
member and weapons and explosives expert Yuri Savelyev. Savelyev claimed that the exchange of gunfire was not begun by explosions within the school building but by two shots fired from outside the school and that most of the home-made explosive devices installed by the rebels did not explode at all. He says the first shot was fired most probably from a RPO-A Shmel infantry rocket located at the roof of nearby five-story House No. 37 in School Lane and aimed at the gymnasium's atticAtticAn attic is a space found directly below the pitched roof of a house or other building . Attic is generally the American/Canadian reference to it...
, while the second one fired from a RShG-1RPG-27The RPG-27 is a Soviet disposable rocket launcher.-History:The RPG-27 Tavolga was developed by the State Research and Production Enterprise, Bazalt as a modern anti-tank grenade launcher designed to defeat modern and future tanks with advanced reactive and composite armor as well as fortified...
grenade launcher located at the House No. 41 on the same street and destroyed a fragment of the gym wall (alternative weapons mentioned in the report were RShG-2RPG-26The RPG-26 Aglen is a disposable anti-tank rocket launcher developed by the Soviet Union. It fires a single-stage rocket with jack-knife fins, which unfold after launch...
or TBG-7VRPG-7The RPG-7 is a widely-produced, portable, unguided, shoulder-launched, anti-tank rocket-propelled grenade launcher. Originally the RPG-7 and its predecessor, the RPG-2, were designed by the Soviet Union, and now manufactured by the Bazalt company...
rocket-propelled grenades). Savelyev, a dissenting member of the federal Torshin commission (see below for the findings of Torshin), claims these explosions killed many of the hostages and that dozens more died in the resulting fire. Yuri Ivanov, another parliamentary investigator, further contended that the grenades were fired on the direct orders of President Putin. Several witnesses during the trial of Kulayev previously testified that the initial explosions were caused by projectiles fired from outside. - In the current officially-approved version, Alexander Torshin, head of the Russian parliamentary commission which concluded its work in December 2006, said the militants had started the battle by intentionally detonating bombs among the hostages, to the surprise of Russian negotiators and commanders. That statement went beyond previous government accounts, which have typically said the bombs exploded in an unexplained accident. Torshin's 2006 report says the hostage taking was planned as a suicide attackSuicide attackA suicide attack is a type of attack in which the attacker expects or intends to die in the process.- Historical :...
from the beginning and that no storming of the building was prepared in advance. The 2005 court ruling in Kulayev's case also determined that the explosion was set off by the militants. However, according to the testimonies by Nur-Pashi Kulayev and several former hostages and negotiators, the hostage-takers including their leaders themselves blamed the government for the ensuing explosions.
Storming by the Russian forces
Part of the sports hall wall was demolished by the explosions, allowing some hostages to escape. Local militia opened fire, and the militants returned fire. A number of people were killed in the crossfire. Russian officials say militants shot hostages as they ran, and the military fired back. The government asserts that once the shooting started, troops had no choice but to storm the building. However, some accounts from the town's residents have contradicted that official version of events.Police Lieutenant Colonel Elbrus Nogayev, whose wife and daughter died in the school, said: "I heard a command saying, 'Stop shooting! Stop shooting!' while other troops' radios said, 'Attack!'" As the fighting began, an oil company president and negotiator Mikhail Gutseriyev
Mikhail Gutseriyev
Mikhail Safarbekovich Gutseriyev is a Russian entrepreneur and previous president of Russneft, a Russian oil company.- Early life :Gutseriyev was born into a family with many children in Tselinograd, in the then-Soviet Republic of Kazakhstan...
(an ethnic Ingush) phoned the hostage-takers; he heard "You tricked us!" in answer. Five hours later, Gutseriyev and his interlocutor reportedly had their last conversation, during which the man said: "The blame is yours and the Kremlin's."
According to Torshin, the order to start the operation was given by the head of the North Ossetian FSB Valery Andreyev. However, statements by both Andreyev and the Dzasokhov indicated that it was FSB deputy directors Vladimir Pronichev and Vladimir Anisimov who were actually in charge of the Beslan operation. General Andreyev also told North Ossetia's Supreme Court
Supreme court
A supreme court is the highest court within the hierarchy of many legal jurisdictions. Other descriptions for such courts include court of last resort, instance court, judgment court, high court, or apex court...
that the decision to use heavy weapons during the assault was made by the head of the FSB's Special Operations Center, Colonel General Aleksandr Tikhonov
Aleksandr Tikhonov
Alexander Ivanovich Tikhonov is a retired Russian biathlete who represented the USSR. Tikhonov trained at Dynamo in Novosibirsk. He is one of the most successful biathletes of all time, with nine world championship gold medals and four Olympic gold medals...
.
A chaotic battle broke out as the special forces fought to enter the school. The forces included the assault groups of the FSB and the associated troops of the Russian Army and the Russian Interior Ministry, supported by a number of T-72
T-72
The T-72 is a Soviet-designed main battle tank that entered production in 1970. It is developed directly from Obyekt-172, and shares parallel features with the T-64A...
tanks from Russia's 58th Army (commandeered by Tikhonov from the military on 2 September), BTR-80
BTR-80
BTR-80 is an 8x8 wheeled armoured personnel carrier designed in the Soviet Union. Production started in 1986 and replaced the previous versions, BTR-60 and BTR-70 in the Soviet army. -Description:The Soviets based the BTR-80 on the BTR-70 APC...
wheeled armoured personnel carriers and armed helicopter
Helicopter
A helicopter is a type of rotorcraft in which lift and thrust are supplied by one or more engine-driven rotors. This allows the helicopter to take off and land vertically, to hover, and to fly forwards, backwards, and laterally...
s, including at least one Mi-24 attack helicopter
Attack helicopter
An attack helicopter is a military helicopter with the primary role of an attack aircraft, with the capability of engaging targets on the ground, such as enemy infantry and armored vehicles...
. Many local civilians also joined in the chaotic battle, having brought along their own weapons (at least one of the armed volunteers is known to have been killed). At the same time, regular conscript
Conscription
Conscription is the compulsory enlistment of people in some sort of national service, most often military service. Conscription dates back to antiquity and continues in some countries to the present day under various names...
soldiers reportedly fled the scene as the fighting began; civilian witnesses claimed that the local police also had panicked, even firing in the wrong direction.
At least three but as many as nine powerful Shmel rockets were fired at the school from the positions of the special forces (three or nine empty disposable tubes were later found on the rooftops of nearby apartment blocks). The use of the Shmel rockets, classified in Russia as flamethrowers and in the West
Western world
The Western world, also known as the West and the Occident , is a term referring to the countries of Western Europe , the countries of the Americas, as well all countries of Northern and Central Europe, Australia and New Zealand...
as thermobaric weapon
Thermobaric weapon
A thermobaric weapon, which includes the type known as a "fuel-air bomb", is an explosive weapon that produces a blast wave of a significantly longer duration than those produced by condensed explosives. This is useful in military applications where its longer duration increases the numbers of...
s, was initially denied, but later admitted by the government. A report by an aide to the military prosecutor
Prosecutor
The prosecutor is the chief legal representative of the prosecution in countries with either the common law adversarial system, or the civil law inquisitorial system...
of the North Ossetian garrison
Garrison
Garrison is the collective term for a body of troops stationed in a particular location, originally to guard it, but now often simply using it as a home base....
stated that RPG-26
RPG-26
The RPG-26 Aglen is a disposable anti-tank rocket launcher developed by the Soviet Union. It fires a single-stage rocket with jack-knife fins, which unfold after launch...
rocket-propelled grenades were used as well. The rebels also used grenade launchers, firing at the Russian positions in the apartment buildings.
According to military prosecutor, a BTR armoured vehicle drove close to the school and opened fire from its 14.5x114mm KPVT heavy machine gun
KPV heavy machine gun
The KPV-14.5 heavy machine gun is a Soviet designed 14.5x114mm-caliber heavy machine gun, which first entered service as an infantry weapon in 1949. In the 1960s the infantry version was taken out of production because it was too big and heavy...
at the windows on the second floor. Eye-witnesses (among them Totoonti and Kesayev) and journalists saw two T-72 tanks advance on the school that afternoon, at least one of which fired its 125 mm main gun several times (the locals found three tank cannon shell casings at the site). During the later trial, tank commander Viktor Kindeyev testified about having fired "one blank
Blank (cartridge)
A blank is a type of cartridge for a firearm that contains gunpowder but no bullet or shot. When fired, the blank makes a flash and an explosive sound . Blanks are often used for simulation , training, and for signaling...
shot and six antipersonnel
Anti-personnel weapon
An anti-personnel weapon is one primarily used to incapacitate people, as opposed to attacking structures or vehicles.The development of defensive fortification and combat vehicles gave rise to weapons designed specifically to attack them, and thus a need to distinguish between those systems and...
-high explosive shells
Shell (projectile)
A shell is a payload-carrying projectile, which, as opposed to shot, contains an explosive or other filling, though modern usage sometimes includes large solid projectiles properly termed shot . Solid shot may contain a pyrotechnic compound if a tracer or spotting charge is used...
" on orders from the FSB. The use of tanks and armoured personnel carriers was eventually admitted by Lieutenant General Viktor Sobolev, commander of the 58th Army. Another witness cited in the Kesayev report claims that he had jumped onto the turret of a tank in an attempt to prevent it from firing on the school. Scores of hostages were moved by the militants from the burning sports hall into the other parts of the school, in particular the cafeteria, where they were forced to stand at windows and many of them were shot by troops outside as they were used as human shields, according to the survivors (such as Kudzeyeva, Kusrayeva and Naldikoyeva). Savelyev estimated that 106 to 110 hostages died after being moved to the cafeteria.
By 15:00, two hours after the assault began, Russian troops claimed control of most of the school. However, fighting was still continuing on the grounds as evening fell, including resistance from a group of militants holding out in the school's basement
Basement
__FORCETOC__A basement is one or more floors of a building that are either completely or partially below the ground floor. Basements are typically used as a utility space for a building where such items as the furnace, water heater, breaker panel or fuse box, car park, and air-conditioning system...
. During the battle, a group of some 13 militants broke through the military cordon and took refuge nearby. Several of them were believed to have entered a nearby two-story building, which was destroyed by tanks and flamethrowers around 21:00, according to the Ossetian committee's findings (Kesayev Report). Another group of militants appeared to head back over the railway, chased by helicopters into the town.
Firefighter
Firefighter
Firefighters are rescuers extensively trained primarily to put out hazardous fires that threaten civilian populations and property, to rescue people from car incidents, collapsed and burning buildings and other such situations...
s, who were called by Andreyev two hours after the fire started, were not prepared to battle the blaze that raged in the gymnasium. One fire truck crew arrived after two hours at their own initiative but with only 200 litres (52.8 US gal) of water and unable to connect to the nearby hydrants, and the first water came nearly two and a half hours after the start of the fire at 15:28; the second fire engine arrived at 15:43. Few ambulances were available to transport the hundreds of injured victims, who were mostly driven to hospital in private cars. One suspected militant was lynch
Lynching
Lynching is an extrajudicial execution carried out by a mob, often by hanging, but also by burning at the stake or shooting, in order to punish an alleged transgressor, or to intimidate, control, or otherwise manipulate a population of people. It is related to other means of social control that...
ed on the scene by a mob of civilians, an event filmed by the Sky News
Sky News
Sky News is a 24-hour British and international satellite television news broadcaster with an emphasis on UK and international news stories.The service places emphasis on rolling news, including the latest breaking news. Sky News also hosts localised versions of the channel in Australia and in New...
crew, while an unarmed militant was captured alive by the OMON troops while trying to hide under their truck (he was later identified as Nur-Pashi Kulayev). Some of the dead insurgents appeared to be mutilated
Mutilation
Mutilation or maiming is an act of physical injury that degrades the appearance or function of any living body, usually without causing death.- Usage :...
by the commandos.
Sporadic explosions and gunfire continued at night despite reports that all resistance by militants had been suppressed, until some 12 hours after the first explosions. Early the next day Putin ordered the borders of North Ossetia closed while some hostage-takers were apparently still pursued.
Aftermath
After the bloody conclusion of the crisis, many of the injured died in the only hospitalHospital
A hospital is a health care institution providing patient treatment by specialized staff and equipment. Hospitals often, but not always, provide for inpatient care or longer-term patient stays....
in Beslan, which was highly unprepared to cope with the casualties, before the patients were sent to better-equipped facilities in Vladikavkaz
Vladikavkaz
-Notable structures:In Vladikavkaz, there is a guyed TV mast, tall, built in 1961, which has six crossbars with gangways in two levels running from the mast structure to the guys.-Twin towns/sister cities:...
. There was an inadequate supply of hospital beds, medication
Medication
A pharmaceutical drug, also referred to as medicine, medication or medicament, can be loosely defined as any chemical substance intended for use in the medical diagnosis, cure, treatment, or prevention of disease.- Classification :...
, and neurosurgery
Neurosurgery
Neurosurgery is the medical specialty concerned with the prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and rehabilitation of disorders which affect any portion of the nervous system including the brain, spine, spinal cord, peripheral nerves, and extra-cranial cerebrovascular system.-In the United States:In...
equipment. Relatives were not allowed to visit hospitals where the wounded were treated, and doctor
Physician
A physician is a health care provider who practices the profession of medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring human health through the study, diagnosis, and treatment of disease, injury and other physical and mental impairments...
s were not allowed to use their mobile phones.
The day after the storming, bulldozer
Bulldozer
A bulldozer is a crawler equipped with a substantial metal plate used to push large quantities of soil, sand, rubble, etc., during construction work and typically equipped at the rear with a claw-like device to loosen densely-compacted materials.Bulldozers can be found on a wide range of sites,...
s gathered the debris of the building, including the body parts of the victims, and removed it to a garbage dump. The first of the many funeral
Funeral
A funeral is a ceremony for celebrating, sanctifying, or remembering the life of a person who has died. Funerary customs comprise the complex of beliefs and practices used by a culture to remember the dead, from interment itself, to various monuments, prayers, and rituals undertaken in their honor...
s were conducted on September 4, the day after the final assault, with more following soon after, including mass burials of 120 people. The local cemetery was too small and had to be expanded to an adjacent plot of land to accommodate the dead. Three days after the siege, 180 people were still missing. Many survivors remained severely traumatized and at least one female former hostage committed suicide
Suicide
Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...
after returning home.
Russian President Vladimir Putin reappeared publicly during a hurried trip to the Beslan hospital in the early hours of September 4 to see several of the wounded victims in his only visit to Beslan. He was later criticised for not meeting the families of victims. After returning to Moscow, he ordered a two-day period of national mourning for September 6 and September 7, 2004. In his televised
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
speech Putin paraphrased Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
saying: "We showed ourselves to be weak. And the weak get beaten." On the second day of mourning, an estimated 135,000 people joined a government-organised rally
Demonstration (people)
A demonstration or street protest is action by a mass group or collection of groups of people in favor of a political or other cause; it normally consists of walking in a mass march formation and either beginning with or meeting at a designated endpoint, or rally, to hear speakers.Actions such as...
against terrorism on the Red Square
Red Square
Red Square is a city square in Moscow, Russia. The square separates the Kremlin, the former royal citadel and currently the official residence of the President of Russia, from a historic merchant quarter known as Kitai-gorod...
in Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
. An estimated 40,000 people gathered in Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea...
's Palace Square
Palace Square
Palace Square , connecting Nevsky Prospekt with Palace Bridge leading to Vasilievsky Island, is the central city square of St Petersburg and of the former Russian Empire...
.
Increased security measures were introduced to Russian cities. More than 10,000 people without proper documents were detained by Moscow police in a "terrorist hunt". Colonel Magomed Tolboyev, a cosmonaut and Hero of the Russian Federation
Hero of the Russian Federation
Hero of the Russian Federation is a Russian decoration and the highest honorary title that can be bestowed on a citizen by the Russian Federation. The President of the Russian Federation is the main conferring authority of the medal, which is bestowed on those committing actions or deeds that...
, was attacked by Moscow police patrol and beaten because of his Chechen-sounding name. The Russian public appeared to be generally supportive of increased security measures. A September 16, 2004 Levada-Center poll
Opinion poll
An opinion poll, sometimes simply referred to as a poll is a survey of public opinion from a particular sample. Opinion polls are usually designed to represent the opinions of a population by conducting a series of questions and then extrapolating generalities in ratio or within confidence...
found 58% of Russians supporting stricter counter-terrorism
Counter-terrorism
Counter-terrorism is the practices, tactics, techniques, and strategies that governments, militaries, police departments and corporations adopt to prevent or in response to terrorist threats and/or acts, both real and imputed.The tactic of terrorism is available to insurgents and governments...
laws and the death penalty for terrorism, while 33% would support banning all Chechens from entering Russian cities.
Basayev said that the Beslan attack had a price tag of 8,000 euro
Euro
The euro is the official currency of the eurozone: 17 of the 27 member states of the European Union. It is also the currency used by the Institutions of the European Union. The eurozone consists of Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg,...
s for his organisation.
Long-term effects
In the wake of Beslan, the government proceeded to toughen laws on terrorism and expand the powers of law enforcement agenciesLaw enforcement agency
In North American English, a law enforcement agency is a government agency responsible for the enforcement of the laws.Outside North America, such organizations are called police services. In North America, some of these services are called police while others have other names In North American...
.
In addition, Vladimir Putin signed a law which replaces the direct election of the heads of the federal subjects of Russia
Federal subjects of Russia
Russia is a federation which, since March 1, 2008, consists of 83 federal subjects . In 1993, when the Constitution was adopted, there were 89 federal subjects listed...
with a system whereby they are proposed by the President of Russia and approved or disapproved by the elected legislative power bodies of the federal subjects. The election system for the Russian Duma
State Duma
The State Duma , common abbreviation: Госду́ма ) in the Russian Federation is the lower house of the Federal Assembly of Russia , the upper house being the Federation Council of Russia. The Duma headquarters is located in central Moscow, a few steps from Manege Square. Its members are referred to...
was also repeatedly amended, eliminating the election of State Duma members by single-mandate districts. The Kremlin consolidated its control over the Russian media and increasingly attacked the non-governmental organization
Non-governmental organization
A non-governmental organization is a legally constituted organization created by natural or legal persons that operates independently from any government. The term originated from the United Nations , and is normally used to refer to organizations that do not form part of the government and are...
s (especially those foreign-founded). Critics allege that the Putin's circle of silovik
Silovik
Silovik is a Russian word for politicians from the security or military services, often the officers of the former KGB, the FSB, the Federal Narcotics Control Service and military or other security services who came into power...
i used the Beslan crisis as an excuse to increase their grip on Russia. On September 16, 2004, the United States Secretary of State
United States Secretary of State
The United States Secretary of State is the head of the United States Department of State, concerned with foreign affairs. The Secretary is a member of the Cabinet and the highest-ranking cabinet secretary both in line of succession and order of precedence...
Colin Powell
Colin Powell
Colin Luther Powell is an American statesman and a retired four-star general in the United States Army. He was the 65th United States Secretary of State, serving under President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2005. He was the first African American to serve in that position. During his military...
said that Russia was "pulling back on some of the democratic
Democracy
Democracy is generally defined as a form of government in which all adult citizens have an equal say in the decisions that affect their lives. Ideally, this includes equal participation in the proposal, development and passage of legislation into law...
reforms" while George W. Bush expressed concern that Putin's latest moves to centralize power "could undermine democracy in Russia". The Russian Foreign Minister
Foreign minister
A Minister of Foreign Affairs, or foreign minister, is a cabinet minister who helps form the foreign policy of a sovereign state. The foreign minister is often regarded as the most senior ministerial position below that of the head of government . It is often granted to the deputy prime minister in...
Sergei Lavrov rejected such criticism, insisting the measures are an "internal matter."
The attack also marked the end to the mass terrorism in the North Caucasus separatist conflict until 2010, when two Dagestan
Dagestan
The Republic of Dagestan is a federal subject of Russia, located in the North Caucasus region. Its capital and the largest city is Makhachkala, located at the center of Dagestan on the Caspian Sea...
i female suicide bombers attacked two train stations in Russia
2010 Moscow Metro bombings
The 2010 Moscow Metro bombings were suicide bombings carried out by two womenduring the morning rush hour of March 29, 2010, at two stations of the Moscow Metro , with roughly 40 minutes interval between...
. This is discussed in more detail below. After Beslan, there was a period of several years of lack of suicide attacks in and outside of Chechnya.
The raid on Beslan had, in fact, more to do with the Ingush involved than the Chechens, but was highly symbolic for both nations. The Ossetes and Ingush had (and have) a conflict over ownership of the Prigorodny District
Prigorodny District
Prigorodny District is the name of several administrative and municipal districts in Russia:*Prigorodny District, Republic of North Ossetia-Alania, an administrative and municipal district of the Republic of North Ossetia-Alania...
, which hit high points during the 1944 Stalinist purges, and the ethnic cleansing
Ethnic cleansing
Ethnic cleansing is a purposeful policy designed by one ethnic or religious group to remove by violent and terror-inspiring means the civilian population of another ethnic orreligious group from certain geographic areas....
of Ingush by Ossetes (the Ossetes getting assistance from the Russian military) in 1992-3. At the time of the raid, there were still over 40,000 Ingush refugees in tent camps in Ingushetia and Chechnya. The Beslan school itself had been used against the Ingush, as in 1992 the gym was used as a pen to round up Ingush during the ethnic cleansing by the Ossetes. For the Chechens, the motive was revenge for the destruction of their homes and, indeed families: Beslan was one of the sites from which federal air raids were launched at Chechnya. The overwhelming majority of the people involved in the hostage taking raid had also been direct victims of Russian government abuse, including many who were victimized as children; the female hostage-taker Khaula Nazirov reportedly had her children killed by the Russian forces in an attack on a school in Chechnya.
Once, however, it was broadcast that there were large numbers of children killed by a group that included Chechens, the Chechens were struck with a large amount of shame. One spokesman for the Chechen independence cause stated that "Such a bigger blow could not be dealt upon us... People around the world will think that Chechens are monsters if they could attack children". He went on to state that the Russians had killed far more children, including in schools during their war in Chechnya, and that this had been deliberately ignored by the rest of the world. Nonetheless, largely for this reason, attacks ceased until 2008.
Casualties
| Official fatalities | |
|---|---|
| Hostages | 334 |
| Other people | 10 |
| Special forces | 10 + |
| Hostage-takers | 31 |
| Total | 385 + |
| – | |
| Official injuries | |
| Security forces | 55 |
| Others | 728 |
| Total | 783 |
At least 396 people, mostly hostages, were killed during the crisis. By September 7, 2004, Russian officials revised the death toll down to 334, including 156 children, but close to 200 people remained missing or unidentified. It was claimed by the locals that over 200 of those killed were found with burn
Burn
A burn is an injury to flesh caused by heat, electricity, chemicals, light, radiation, or friction.Burn may also refer to:*Combustion*Burn , type of watercourses so named in Scotland and north-eastern England...
s, and 100 or more of them burned when still alive. The latest reported fatality was 33-year-old librarian
Librarian
A librarian is an information professional trained in library and information science, which is the organization and management of information services or materials for those with information needs...
Yelena Avdonina, who succumbed to her wounds on December 8, 2006.
Russia's Minister of Health and Social Reform Mikhail Zurabov said the total number of people who were injured in the crisis exceeded 1,200. The exact number of people that received ambulatory assistance immediately after the crisis is not known, but is estimated to be around 700 (753 according to the UN). Moscow-based military analyst Pavel Felgenhauer
Pavel Felgenhauer
Pavel E. Felgenhauer is a Russian journalist. He is known for his publications critical of Russia's political and military elite.-Biography:...
concluded on September 7, 2004, that 90% of the surviving hostages had sustained injuries. At least 437 people, including 221 children, were hospitalized. 197 children were taken to the Children’s Republican Clinical Hospital in the North Ossetian capital of Vladikavkaz, and 30 were in cardiopulmonary resuscitation
Cardiopulmonary resuscitation
Cardiopulmonary resuscitation is an emergency procedure which is performed in an effort to manually preserve intact brain function until further measures are taken to restore spontaneous blood circulation and breathing in a person in cardiac arrest. It is indicated in those who are unresponsive...
units in critical condition
Medical state
Medical states or medical conditions are used to describe a patient's condition in a hospital. These terms are most commonly used by the news media and are rarely used by doctors, who in their daily business prefer to deal with medical problems in greater detail.Either or both of two aspects of...
. Another 150 people were transferred to the Vladikavkaz Emergency Hospital. Sixty-two people, including 12 children, were treated in two local hospitals in Beslan, while six children with severe injuries were flown to Moscow for specialist treatment. The majority of the children were treated for burns, gunshot injuries
Ballistic trauma
The term ballistic trauma refers to a form of physical trauma sustained from the discharge of arms or munitions. The most common forms of ballistic trauma stem from firearms used in armed conflicts, civilian sporting and recreational pursuits, and criminal activity.-Destructive effects:The degree...
and shrapnel wounds, and mutilation caused by explosions. Some had to have limbs amputated
Amputation
Amputation is the removal of a body extremity by trauma, prolonged constriction, or surgery. As a surgical measure, it is used to control pain or a disease process in the affected limb, such as malignancy or gangrene. In some cases, it is carried out on individuals as a preventative surgery for...
and eyes removed and many children were permanently disabled. One month after the attack, 240 people (160 of them children) were still being treated in hospitals in Vladikavkaz and in Beslan. Surviving children and parents have received psychological
Psychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
treatment at Vladikavkaz Rehabilitation Centre.
It is not known how many members of Russia's elite special forces died in the fighting, as official figures ranged from 11 through 12 and 16 (seven Alfa and nine Vympel) to more than 20 killed. There are only 10 names on the special forces monument in Beslan. The fatalities included all three commanders of the assault group: Colonel Oleg Ilyin and Lieutenant Colonel Dmitry Ratzumovsky of Vympel, and Major Alexander Petrov of Alfa. At least 30 commandos suffered serious wounds.
Identity of hostage-takers, motives and responsibility
Responsibility
Initially, the identity and origin of the attackers was not clear. It was widely assumed from day two that they were separatists from nearby Chechnya, even as Putin's presidential Chechen aide Aslambek Aslakhanov denied it, saying "they were not Chechens. When I started talking with them in ChechenChechen language
The Chechen language is spoken by more than 1.5 million people, mostly in Chechnya and by Chechen people elsewhere. It is a member of the Northeast Caucasian languages.-Classification:...
, they had answered: 'We do not understand, speak Russian.'" Freed hostages said that the hostage-takers spoke Russian with accents typical for the Caucasians.
Even as in the past Putin has rarely hesitated to blame the Chechen separatists for acts of terrorism, this time he avoided linking the attack with the Second Chechen War
Second Chechen War
The Second Chechen War, in a later phase better known as the War in the North Caucasus, was launched by the Russian Federation starting 26 August 1999, in response to the Invasion of Dagestan by the Islamic International Peacekeeping Brigade ....
. Instead, he blamed the crisis on the "direct intervention of international terrorism", ignoring the nationalist
Nationalism
Nationalism is a political ideology that involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms, i.e. a nation. In the 'modernist' image of the nation, it is nationalism that creates national identity. There are various definitions for what...
roots of the crisis. The Russian government sources initially claimed that nine of the militants in Beslan were of Arab descent and one was a black Africa
Africa
Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...
n (called "a negro" by Andreyev), though only two Arabs were identified later. Independent analysts such as that of the Moscow political commentator Andrei Piontkovsky said Putin at this moment tried to minimize the number and scale of Chechen terrorist attacks, rather than to exaggerate them like he did in the past. Putin appeared to connect the events to the U.S.-led "War on Terrorism
War on Terrorism
The War on Terror is a term commonly applied to an international military campaign led by the United States and the United Kingdom with the support of other North Atlantic Treaty Organisation as well as non-NATO countries...
", but at the same time has accused the West of indulging terrorists.
On September 17, 2004, radical Chechen guerrilla commander Shamil Basayev, at this time operating autonomously from the rest of the North Caucasian rebel movement, issued a statement claiming responsibility for the Beslan school siege, which was incidentally strikingly similar to the Chechen raid on Budyonnovsk
Budyonnovsk hospital hostage crisis
The Budyonnovsk hospital hostage crisis took place from 14 June to 19 June 1995, when a group of 80 to 200 Chechen terrorists led by Shamil Basayev attacked the southern Russian city of Budyonnovsk , some north of the border with the Russian republic of Chechnya...
in 1995 and the Moscow theatre crisis in 2002, incidents in which hundreds of Russian civilians were held hostage by the Chechen rebels personally led by Basayev or answering to him. Basayev said his Riyadus-Salikhin "martyr battalion" had carried out this attack and also claimed responsibility for a series of terrorist bombings in Russia in the weeks before Beslan crisis. He said that he originally planned to seize at least one school in either Moscow or Saint Petersburg, but lack of funds forced him to pick North Ossetia, "the Russian garrison in the North Caucasus". Basayev blamed the Russian authorities for "a terrible tragedy" in Beslan. Basayev claimed that he had miscalculated the Kremlin's determination to end the crisis by all means possible. He said he was "cruelly mistaken" and that he was "not delighted by what happened there", but also added to be "planning more Beslan-type operations in the future because we are forced to do so." However, it was the last major act of terrorism
Terrorism
Terrorism is the systematic use of terror, especially as a means of coercion. In the international community, however, terrorism has no universally agreed, legally binding, criminal law definition...
in Russia until 2009, as Basayev was soon persuaded to give up indiscriminate attacks by the new rebel leader Abdul-Halim Sadulayev, who made Basayev his second-in-command but banned hostage taking, kidnapping
Kidnapping
In criminal law, kidnapping is the taking away or transportation of a person against that person's will, usually to hold the person in false imprisonment, a confinement without legal authority...
for ransom
Ransom
Ransom is the practice of holding a prisoner or item to extort money or property to secure their release, or it can refer to the sum of money involved.In an early German law, a similar concept was called bad influence...
, and operations specifically targeting civilians.
The Chechen separatist leader Aslan Maskhadov immediately denied that his forces were involved in the siege, calling it "a blasphemy
Blasphemy
Blasphemy is irreverence towards religious or holy persons or things. Some countries have laws to punish blasphemy, while others have laws to give recourse to those who are offended by blasphemy...
" for which "there is no justification". Maskhadov described the perpetrators of Beslan as "madmen" driven out of their senses by Russian acts of brutality. He condemned the action and all attacks against civilians via a statement issued by his envoy Akhmed Zakayev in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, blamed it on what he called a radical local group, and agreed to the North Ossetian proposition to act as a negotiator. Later, he also called on western governments to initiate peace talks between Russia and Chechnya and added to "categorically refute all accusations by the Russian government that President Maskhadov had any involvement in the Beslan event." In response, Putin has vowed not to negotiate with "child-killers
Child murder
The murder of children is considered an abhorrent crime in much of the world; they are perceived within their communities and the state at large as being vulnerable, and therefore especially susceptible to abduction and murder. The protection of children from abuse and possible death often involves...
", comparing the calls for the negotiations with the appeasement of Hitler, and put a $10 million bounty
Bounty (reward)
A bounty is a payment or reward often offered by a group as an incentive for the accomplishment of a task by someone usually not associated with the group. Bounties are most commonly issued for the capture or retrieval of a person or object. They are typically in the form of money...
on Maskhadov (the same amount as he put out for Basayev). Maskhadov was killed by Russian commandos in Chechnya on March 8, 2005, and buried in an undisclosed location.
Shortly after the crisis, official Russian sources stated that the attackers were part of a supposed international group led by Basayev that included a number of Arabs with connections to al-Qaeda
Al-Qaeda
Al-Qaeda is a global broad-based militant Islamist terrorist organization founded by Osama bin Laden sometime between August 1988 and late 1989. It operates as a network comprising both a multinational, stateless army and a radical Sunni Muslim movement calling for global Jihad...
, and claimed they picked up phone calls in Arabic from the Beslan school to Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia , commonly known in British English as Saudi Arabia and in Arabic as as-Sa‘ūdiyyah , is the largest state in Western Asia by land area, constituting the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula, and the second-largest in the Arab World...
and another undisclosed Middle East
Middle East
The Middle East is a region that encompasses Western Asia and Northern Africa. It is often used as a synonym for Near East, in opposition to Far East...
ern country. Two English
English people
The English are a nation and ethnic group native to England, who speak English. The English identity is of early mediaeval origin, when they were known in Old English as the Anglecynn. England is now a country of the United Kingdom, and the majority of English people in England are British Citizens...
/Algeria
Algeria
Algeria , officially the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria , also formally referred to as the Democratic and Popular Republic of Algeria, is a country in the Maghreb region of Northwest Africa with Algiers as its capital.In terms of land area, it is the largest country in Africa and the Arab...
ns are among the identified rebels who actively participated in the attack: Osman Larussi and Yacine Benalia
Yacine Benalia
Yacine Benalia was an Algerian-born Islamist militant who allegedly participated in the Beslan school hostage crisis in September of 2004. Whether he truly participated is unclear, as he was also reported killed in Chechnya in March of 2004, six months before the hostage drama in North...
. Another UK
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
citizen named Kamel Rabat Bouralha
Kamel Rabat Bouralha
Kamel Rabat Bouralha, is the name of an Algerian-born British citizen who has been accused by the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation of being a key aide to Chechen rebel warlord Shamil Basayev in organizing the Beslan school hostage crisis....
, arrested while trying to leave Russia immediately following the attack, was suspected to be a key organizer. All three were linked to the Finsbury Park Mosque
Finsbury Park Mosque
North London Central Mosque in Finsbury Park, London was built in the 1990s to serve the large Muslim population in the area. It has a capacity of 1,800 people....
of north London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
. The allegations of al-Qaeda involvement were not repeated since then by the Russian government.
According to the Russian government, following people were named as planners and financiers of the attack:
- Shamil BasayevShamil BasayevShamil Salmanovich Basayev was a Chechen militant Islamist and a leader of the Chechen rebel movement.Starting as a field commander in the Transcaucasus, Basayev led guerrilla campaigns against the Russian troops for years, as well as launching mass-hostage takings of civilians, with his goal...
– Chechen rebel leader who took ultimate responsibility for the attack, he died in Ingushetia in July 2006 in disputed circumstances. - Kamel Rabat BouralhaKamel Rabat BouralhaKamel Rabat Bouralha, is the name of an Algerian-born British citizen who has been accused by the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation of being a key aide to Chechen rebel warlord Shamil Basayev in organizing the Beslan school hostage crisis....
– British-Algerian suspected of organizing the attack, who was reported detained in Chechnya in September 2004. - Abu Omar al-SaifAbu Omar al-SaifAbu Omar al-Saif was an informal name or nom de guerre of a Saudi Islamist and fighter operating first in Afghanistan and later in the North Caucasus as the mufti of Arab fighters in Chechnya, allegedly with close ties to al-Qaeda. His full name was Muhammad bin Abdullah bin Saif al-Tamimi...
– SaudiSaudi ArabiaThe Kingdom of Saudi Arabia , commonly known in British English as Saudi Arabia and in Arabic as as-Sa‘ūdiyyah , is the largest state in Western Asia by land area, constituting the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula, and the second-largest in the Arab World...
national and accused financer, killed in Dagestan in December 2005. - Abu Zaid Al-Kuwaiti – KuwaitKuwaitThe State of Kuwait is a sovereign Arab state situated in the north-east of the Arabian Peninsula in Western Asia. It is bordered by Saudi Arabia to the south at Khafji, and Iraq to the north at Basra. It lies on the north-western shore of the Persian Gulf. The name Kuwait is derived from the...
i national and accused organizer, who died in Ingushetia in February 2005.
In November 2004, 28-year-old Akhmed Merzhoyev and 16-year-old Marina Korigova of Sagopshi
Sagopshi
Sagopshi is a village in Malgobeksky District of the Republic of Ingushetia, Russia. It is located at . Population: 10,738 ....
, Ingushetia, were arrested by the Russian authorities in connection with Beslan. Merzhoyev was charged with providing food and equipment to the hostage-takers, and Korigova with having possession of a phone that Tsechoyev had phoned multiple times. Korigova was released when her defence attorney
Lawyer
A lawyer, according to Black's Law Dictionary, is "a person learned in the law; as an attorney, counsel or solicitor; a person who is practicing law." Law is the system of rules of conduct established by the sovereign government of a society to correct wrongs, maintain the stability of political...
showed that she was given the phone by an acquaintance after the crisis.
Motives and demands
Russian negotiators say the Beslan militants never explicitly stated their demands, although they did have notes handwritten by one of the hostages on a school notebook, in which they spelled out demands of full Russian troop withdrawal from Chechnya and recognition of Chechen independenceIndependence
Independence is a condition of a nation, country, or state in which its residents and population, or some portion thereof, exercise self-government, and usually sovereignty, over its territory....
.
The hostage-takers were reported to have made the following demands:
- Withdrawal of Russian troops from Chechnya and independence for Chechnya.
- Presence of the following people at the school: Aleksander Dzasokhov (president of North Ossetia), Murat ZyazikovMurat ZyazikovMurat Magometovich Zyazikov is the former president of the southern Russian republic of Ingushetia. He was born in what is now Kyrgyzstan. Zyazikov was a controversial politician in Ingushetia.- Political Career :...
(president of Ingushetia), Ruslan AushevRuslan AushevRuslan Sultanovich Aushev was the president of Ingushetia from March 1993 to December 2001. He was reportedly the youngest officer in the Soviet army to reach the rank of Lieutenant General. He received the Gold Star of the Hero of the Soviet Union on May 7, 1982...
(former president of Ingushetia), Leonid RoshalLeonid RoshalLeonid Mikhailovich Roshal is a noted pediatrician from Moscow, Russia, expert for World Health Organization, chairman of International Charity Fund to Help Children in Disasters and Wars....
(a pediatrician). Alternatively, instead of Roshal and Aushev, the hostage-takers might have named Vladimir Rushailo and Alu AlkhanovAlu AlkhanovAlu Dadashevich Alkhanov is a Russian politician, the former president of Russia's Chechen Republic.Alkhanov is a career police officer who fought within the ranks of the Russian army during the First Chechen War. He was elected president on August 30, 2004, under controversial circumstances...
(pro-Moscow President of Chechnya).
Dzasokhov and Zyazikov did not come to Beslan (Dzasokhov later claimed that he was forcibly stopped by "a very high-ranking general from the Interior Ministry [who] said, 'I have received orders to arrest you if you try to go'"). The stated reason why Zyazikov did not arrive was that he has been "sick". Aushev, Zyazikov's predecessor at the post of Ingushetia's president (he was forced to resign by Putin in 2002), entered the school and secured the release of 26 hostages.
Aslakhanov said that the hostage-takers also demanded the release of some 28 to 30 suspects detained in the crackdown following the rebel raids in Ingushetia
2004 Nazran raid
The Nazran raid was a large-scale raid carried out in the Republic of Ingushetia, Russia, on the night of June 21-22, 2004, by a large number of mostly Chechen and Ingush militants led by the Chechen commander Shamil Basayev...
earlier in June.
The 1 September
8-928-738-33-374
We request the republic's president Dzasokhov, the president of Ingushetia Ziazikov, the children's doctor Rashailo for negotiations. If anyone of us is killed, we'll shoot 50 people. If anyone of us is wounded, we'll kill 20 people. If 5 of us are killed, we'll blow up everything. If the light, communication are cut off for a minute, we'll shoot 10 people.
The telephone number according to pravdabeslana.ru; the federal committee reported 8–928–728–33–74. The hostage who was made to write the note misspelled doctor Roshal's name.
The September 1
The September 2
From AllahAllahAllah is a word for God used in the context of Islam. In Arabic, the word means simply "God". It is used primarily by Muslims and Bahá'ís, and often, albeit not exclusively, used by Arabic-speaking Eastern Catholic Christians, Maltese Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox Christians, Mizrahi Jews and...
's slave Shamil Basayev to President Putin.
Vladimir Putin, it was not you who started this war. But you can finish it if you have enough courage and determination of de GaulleCharles de GaulleCharles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle was a French general and statesman who led the Free French Forces during World War II. He later founded the French Fifth Republic in 1958 and served as its first President from 1959 to 1969....
. We offer you a sensible peace based on mutual benefit by the principle—independence in exchange for security. In case of troops withdrawal and acknowledgement of independence of Chechen Republic of IchkeriaChechen Republic of IchkeriaThe Chechen Republic of Ichkeria is the unrecognized secessionist government of Chechnya. The republic was proclaimed in late 1991 by Dzokhar Dudayev, and fought two devastating wars between separatists and the Russian Federation which denounced secession...
, we are obliged not to make any political, military, or economic treatiesTreatyA treaty is an express agreement under international law entered into by actors in international law, namely sovereign states and international organizations. A treaty may also be known as an agreement, protocol, covenant, convention or exchange of letters, among other terms...
with anyone against Russia, not to accommodate foreign military bases on our territory even temporarily, not to support and not to finance groups or organizations carrying out a military struggle against RF, to be present in the united rubleRubleThe ruble or rouble is a unit of currency. Currently, the currency units of Belarus, Russia, Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Transnistria, and, in the past, the currency units of several other countries, notably countries influenced by Russia and the Soviet Union, are named rubles, though they all are...
zone, to enter CISCommonwealth of Independent StatesThe Commonwealth of Independent States is a regional organization whose participating countries are former Soviet Republics, formed during the breakup of the Soviet Union....
. Besides, we can sign a treaty even though a neutral stateNeutral countryA neutral power in a particular war is a sovereign state which declares itself to be neutral towards the belligerents. A non-belligerent state does not need to be neutral. The rights and duties of a neutral power are defined in Sections 5 and 13 of the Hague Convention of 1907...
status is more acceptable to us. We can also guarantee a renunciation of armed struggle against RF by all Muslims of RussiaIslam in RussiaIslam is the second most widely professed religion in the Russian Federation. According to a poll by the Russian Public Opinion Research Center, 6% of respondents considered themselves Muslims. According to Reuters, Muslim minorities make up a seventh of Russia's population...
for at least 10 to 15 years under condition of freedom of faithFreedom of religionFreedom of religion is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or community, in public or private, to manifest religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship, and observance; the concept is generally recognized also to include the freedom to change religion or not to follow any...
. We are not related to the apartment bombings in Moscow and VolgodonskRussian apartment bombingsThe Russian apartment bombings were a series of explosions that hit four apartment blocks in the Russian cities of Buynaksk, Moscow, and Volgodonsk in September 1999, killing 293 people and injuring 651. The explosions occurred in Buynaksk on 4 September, Moscow on 9 and 13 September, and...
, but we can take responsibility for this in an acceptable way.
The Chechen people is leading a nation-liberating struggleWars of national liberationIn Marxist terminology, wars of national liberation or national liberation revolutions are conflicts fought by oppressed nationalities against imperial powers to establish separate sovereign states for the subjugated nationality. From a Western point of view, these same wars are called insurgencies...
for its freedom and independence, for its self-protection rather than for destruction or humiliation of Russia. We offer you peace, but the choice is yours.
Allahu AkbarTakbirThe Takbīr or Tekbir is the Arabic term for the phrase ' . It is usually translated "God is [the] Greatest," or "God is Great". It is a common Islamic Arabic expression...
Signature
30 August
Later, Basayev said there was also an alternative option: if President Putin submitted a letter of resignation
Letter of resignation
A letter of resignation is written to announce the author's intent to leave a position currently held, such as an office, employment or commission....
, the hostage-takers would "release all the children and go back to Chechnya with others."
Hostage-takers
According to the official version of events, 32 militants participated directly in the seizure, one of whom was taken alive while the rest were killed on spot. The number and identity of hostage-takers remains a controversial topic, fueled by the often contradictory government statements and official documents. The September 3–4 government statements said total of 26–27 militants were killed during the siege. At least four militants, including two women, died prior to the Russian storming of the school.Many of the surviving hostages and eyewitnesses claim there were many more captors, some of whom may have escaped. It was also initially claimed that three hostage-takers were captured alive, including their leader Vladimir Khodov
Vladimir Khodov
Born in 1976, Vladimir Anatolievich Khodov was one of the six leaders in the 2004 Beslan school hostage crisis.-Early life:Vladimir was born by medical nurse Alexandra Samoshkina the Ukrainian town of Berdyansk...
and a female militant. Witness testimonies during the Kulayev trial involved the reported presence of a number of apparently Slavic
Slavic peoples
The Slavic people are an Indo-European panethnicity living in Eastern Europe, Southeast Europe, North Asia and Central Asia. The term Slavic represents a broad ethno-linguistic group of people, who speak languages belonging to the Slavic language family and share, to varying degrees, certain...
and unaccented Russian- and "perfect" Ossetian-speaking individuals among the hostage-takers who were not seen among the bodies of the militants killed during the assault by Russian security forces and the witnesses said they were not seen by the third and final day of the crisis at all. Those mysterious men (and a woman according to one testimony) included a man with red beard who was reportedly issuing orders even to the kidnappers' leaders, and whom the hostages were forbidden to look at (possibly the militant known only as "Fantomas
Fantômas
Fantômas is a fictional character created by French writers Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre .One of the most popular characters in the history of French crime fiction, Fantômas was created in 1911 and appeared in a total of 32 volumes written by the two collaborators, then a subsequent 11...
", an ethnic Russian who served as a bodyguard
Bodyguard
A bodyguard is a type of security operative or government agent who protects a person—usually a famous, wealthy, or politically important figure—from assault, kidnapping, assassination, stalking, loss of confidential information, terrorist attack or other threats.Most important public figures such...
to Shamil Basayev).
- Kesayev Report (2005) estimated that about 50 rebel fighters took part in the siege, based on witness accounts and the number of weapons left at the scene.
- Savelyev Report (September 2006) said there were from 58 to 76 hostage-takers, of which many managed to escape by slipping past the cordon around the school.
- Torshin Report (December 2006) determined that 34 militants were involved, of which 32 entered the school and 31 died there, and says the two accomplices remain at large (one being Yunus Matsiyev, a bodyguard of Basayev).
According to Basayev, "Thirty-three mujahideen
Mujahideen
Mujahideen are Muslims who struggle in the path of God. The word is from the same Arabic triliteral as jihad .Mujahideen is also transliterated from Arabic as mujahedin, mujahedeen, mudžahedin, mudžahidin, mujahidīn, mujaheddīn and more.-Origin of the concept:The beginnings of Jihad are traced...
took part in Nord-West
Moscow theater hostage crisis
The Moscow theater hostage crisis, also known as the 2002 Nord-Ost siege, was the seizure of the crowded Dubrovka Theater on 23 October 2002 by some 40 to 50 armed Chechens who claimed allegiance to the Islamist militant separatist movement in Chechnya. They took 850 hostages and demanded the...
. Two of them were women. We prepared four [women] but I sent two of them to Moscow on August 24. They then boarded the two airplanes that blew up
Russian aircraft bombings of August 2004
The Russian aircraft bombings of August 2004 were terrorist attacks on two domestic Russian passenger aircraft at around 23:00 on August 24, 2004. Both planes had flown out of Domodedovo International Airport in Moscow....
. In the group there were 12 Chechen men, two Chechen women, nine Ingush, three Russians, two Arabs, two Ossetians, one Tartar
Tatars
Tatars are a Turkic speaking ethnic group , numbering roughly 7 million.The majority of Tatars live in the Russian Federation, with a population of around 5.5 million, about 2 million of which in the republic of Tatarstan.Significant minority populations are found in Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan,...
, one Kabardinian and one Guran
Kurdish tribes
Kurdish tribes of Kurdistan consist of:*Republic of Azerbaijan*Sheylanli tribe*West Azarbaijan Province:*Jalali*Milan*Haydaran*Donboli*korahsuni*Shekak*Herki*Bagzâdah*Zerzâ*Pirân*Pizhdar*Mâmash*Mangur*Mokri*Dehbokri*Gowrâg*Malkari*Suseni...
. The Gurans are a people who live near Lake Baikal
Lake Baikal
Lake Baikal is the world's oldest at 30 million years old and deepest lake with an average depth of 744.4 metres.Located in the south of the Russian region of Siberia, between Irkutsk Oblast to the northwest and the Buryat Republic to the southeast, it is the most voluminous freshwater lake in the...
who are practically Russified
Russification
Russification is an adoption of the Russian language or some other Russian attributes by non-Russian communities...
."
Basayev further said an FSB agent (Khodov) had been sent undercover to the rebels to persuade them to carry out an attack on a target in North Ossetia's capital, Vladikavkaz, and that the group was allowed to enter the region with ease, because the FSB planned to capture them at their destination in Vladikavkaz. He also claimed that an unnamed hostage-taker had survived the siege and managed to escape.
Identities
On September 6, 2004, the names and identities of seven of the assailants became known, after forensic work over the weekend and interviews with surviving hostages and a captured assailant. (The forensic tests also established that 21 of the hostage-takers took heroin as well as morphineMorphine
Morphine is a potent opiate analgesic medication and is considered to be the prototypical opioid. It was first isolated in 1804 by Friedrich Sertürner, first distributed by same in 1817, and first commercially sold by Merck in 1827, which at the time was a single small chemists' shop. It was more...
in a normally fatal amount; the investigation cited the use of drugs as a reason for the militants’ ability to continue fighting despite being badly wounded and presumably in great pain.) In November 2004, Russian officials announced that 27 of the 32 hostage-takers had been identified. However, in September 2005, the lead prosecutor against Nur-Pashi Kulayev stated that only 22 of the 32 bodies of the captors had been identified, leading to further confusion over which identities have been confirmed.
Most of the suspects, aged 20–35, were identified as Ingush or residents of Ingushetia (some of them Chechen refugees
Chechen refugees
During the inter-ethnic strife in Chechnya and the two separatist First and Second Chechen Wars, hundreds of thousands of Chechen refugees have left their homes and left the republic for elsewhere in Russia and abroad.-In Russia:...
). At least five of the suspected hostage-takers were declared dead by Russian authorities before the seizure, while eight were known to have been previously arrested and then released, in some cases shortly before the Beslan attack.
Male
The male hostage-takers were tentatively identified by the Russian government as:
- Ruslan Tagirovich KhuchbarovRuslan KhuchbarovRuslan Tagirovich Khuchbarov , sometimes spelled Khochubarov, was an Ingush man presumed to be the Islamic militant nicknamed "Polkovnik" notorious for his leading role in the 2004 Beslan school hostage crisis...
(32), nicknamed "Polkovnik" ("ColonelColonelColonel , abbreviated Col or COL, is a military rank of a senior commissioned officer. It or a corresponding rank exists in most armies and in many air forces; the naval equivalent rank is generally "Captain". It is also used in some police forces and other paramilitary rank structures...
") – An ethnic Ingush and native of Galashki, Ingushetia. Reputed group leader, disputed identity (possibly escaped and at large). Basayev identified him as "Col. Orstkhoyev" (Polkovnik means Russian for "ColonelColonelColonel , abbreviated Col or COL, is a military rank of a senior commissioned officer. It or a corresponding rank exists in most armies and in many air forces; the naval equivalent rank is generally "Captain". It is also used in some police forces and other paramilitary rank structures...
"). Reportedly referred to by the other militants also as "Ali", he led the negotiations on behalf of the hostage-takers. Initially reported to be Ali Taziyev, an Ingush policeman-turned-rebel who was declared legally dead in 2000; but this was later refuted by the Russian prosecutors. In the conversations, "Ali" claimed his family was killed by the Russians in Chechnya. Investigaters alleged this was the same person as Akhmed Yevloyev "Magas", an Ingush rebel leader also known as Ali Taziyev, but those reports were also declared incorrect later. ("Magas" was captured by the FSB in 2010.) Also spelled Khochubarov. - Vladimir Anatolievich KhodovVladimir KhodovBorn in 1976, Vladimir Anatolievich Khodov was one of the six leaders in the 2004 Beslan school hostage crisis.-Early life:Vladimir was born by medical nurse Alexandra Samoshkina the Ukrainian town of Berdyansk...
"Abdullah" (28) – An ethnic Ossetian-UkrainianUkrainiansUkrainians are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Ukraine, which is the sixth-largest nation in Europe. The Constitution of Ukraine applies the term 'Ukrainians' to all its citizens...
from the village of Elkhotovo in Kirovsky DistrictKirovsky District, Republic of North Ossetia-AlaniaKirovsky District is an administrative and municipal district , one of the eight in the Republic of North Ossetia–Alania, Russia. Its administrative center is the rural locality of Elkhotovo. District's population: 26,571 ; Population of Elkhotovo accounts for 45.9% of the district's population....
of North Ossetia, a former pupil of the Beslan SNO and one of the reputed leaders of the hostage-takers. Some of the survivors described him as the most scary and aggressive of all the militants. Khodov converted to Islam while in prison for rape. He was officially wanted for a series of bomb attacks in Vladikavkaz, yet he lived openly in his hometown for more than a month before the attack. Basayev claimed that Khodov was a FSB double agentDouble agentA double agent, commonly abbreviated referral of double secret agent, is a counterintelligence term used to designate an employee of a secret service or organization, whose primary aim is to spy on the target organization, but who in fact is a member of that same target organization oneself. They...
code-named "Putnik" ("Traveller"), sent to infiltrate the rebel movement. (Not to be confused with the head of the Beslan administration in 2004, also named Vladimir Khodov.) - Iznaur Kodzoyev – An Ingush from Kantyshevo, Ingushetia, father of five children. His cousin claimed he saw him in their home village on the second day of the hostage crisis. In August 2005 the Russian forces in Igushetia killed a man identified as Iznaur Kodzoyev, who they said was one of hostage-takers despite the fact that his body was identified among these killed in Beslan. Kodzoyev had been also previously announced by the Russians to be killed months before the Beslan crisis.
- Khizir-Ali Akhmedov (30) – Native of Bilto-Yurt, Chechnya.
- Rustam Atayev (25) – Native of Psedkah, Ingushetia, ethnic Chechen. His 12-year-old younger brother and two other boys were murdered in 2002 in GroznyGroznyGrozny is the capital city of the Chechen Republic, Russia. The city lies on the Sunzha River. According to the preliminary results of the 2010 Census, the city had a population of 271,596; up from 210,720 recorded in the 2002 Census. but still only about two-thirds of 399,688 recorded in the 1989...
by unidentified men in camouflage. - Rizvan Vakhitovich Barchashvili (26) – Native of Nesterovskaya, a Cossack village in Ingushetia. Had changed his name to Aldzbekov. His body was identified by DNA testing.
- Usman Magomedovich Aushev (33) – An Ingush from Ekazhevo, Ingushetia.
- Yacine Benalia (35) – A BritishBritish peopleThe British are citizens of the United Kingdom, of the Isle of Man, any of the Channel Islands, or of any of the British overseas territories, and their descendants...
-Algerian who had already been reported killed earlier. - Adam Magomed-Khasanovich Iliyev (20) – An Ingush from MalgobekMalgobekMalgobek is a town in the Republic of Ingushetia, Russia, located northwest of the republic's capital Magas. Population: Malgobek was founded in 1935 as a settlement for workers at then recently discovered oilfields, on the territory of former Ingush villages of Malgobek-Balka and Chechen-Balka...
, Ingushetia. Iliyev was arrested a year before for illegal arms possession and then released. - Ibragim Magomedovich Dzortov (28) – An Ingush from NazranNazranNazran is a town in the Republic of Ingushetia, Russia. It served as the republic's capital in 1991–2000, until the town of Magas was specially built as the new capital. Nazran is the largest city of the republic: -General:...
, Ingushetia. - Ilnur Gainullin (23) – An ethnic Tatar and medical school graduate "from a good family" in Moscow.
- Adilgirey Beksultanovich Gatagazhev (29) – An Ingush from Sagopshi, Ingushetia.
- Sultan Kamurzayev (27) – A Chechen from KazakhstanKazakhstanKazakhstan , officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a transcontinental country in Central Asia and Eastern Europe. Ranked as the ninth largest country in the world, it is also the world's largest landlocked country; its territory of is greater than Western Europe...
. Other sources say he's from Nazran, Ingushetia, and that he was arrested as a rebel fighter in Chechnya in 2000. - Magomed Khochubarov (21) – An Ingush from Nazran. Native of Surkhakhi, Ingushetia, had a conviction for the illegal possession of weapons. Also spelled Magomet.
- Khan-Pashi Kulayev (31) – A Chechen from Engenoi. One-armed (he lost his hand in Russian captivity from an untreated wound) older brother of Nur-Pashi and a former bodyguard of Basayev. He was released from Russian prison before the attack.
- Nur-Pashi KulayevNur-Pashi KulayevNur-Pashi Kulayev , a native of Engenoi, Chechnya, is thought to be the sole survivor of the 32 hostage-takers in the 2004 Beslan school hostage crisis, although Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev denied the claim, stating that one other escaped....
(24) – A Chechen from Engenoi recruited to help his brother Han-Pashi despite (as he maintained) being admitted into pro-Moscow Chechen militia forces of Ramzan KadyrovRamzan KadyrovRamzan Akhmadovich Kadyrov is the President of Chechnya and a former Chechen rebel.Ramzan is a son of former Chechen President Akhmad Kadyrov, assassinated in May 2004. In February 2007 Kadyrov replaced Alu Alkhanov as President, shortly after he had turned 30, which is the minimum age for the post...
("KadyrovtsyKadyrovtsyKadyrovtsy also Kadyrovites, is a term used by the population of Chechnya, as well as members of the groups themselves, for former members of the paramilitary units of the former pro-Moscow President of the Chechen Republic Akhmad Kadyrov, headed by his son and the current President Ramzan...
"). Captured in Beslan and sentenced to life in prison. - Adam Kushtov (17) – An ethnic Ingush who as a child had fled North Ossetia during the ethnic cleansingEthnic cleansingEthnic cleansing is a purposeful policy designed by one ethnic or religious group to remove by violent and terror-inspiring means the civilian population of another ethnic orreligious group from certain geographic areas....
in 1992. - Abdul-Azim Labazanov (31) – A Chechen born in internal exile in Kazakhstan. He has initially fought on the Russian side in the First Chechen WarFirst Chechen WarThe First Chechen War, also known as the War in Chechnya, was a conflict between the Russian Federation and the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, fought from December 1994 to August 1996...
before defecting to the group of Dokka Umarov. - Osman Larussi (35) – A British-Algerian, who had already been reported killed earlier.
- Arsen Merzhoyev (25) – A native of Engenoi, Chechnya.
- Adam Akhmedovich Poshev (22) – An Ingush from Malgobek, Ingushetia.
- Mayrbek Said-Aliyevich Shaybekhanov (25) – A Chechen from Engenoi who lived in Psedakh, Ingushetia. He was arrested in Ingushetia and then released shortly before the school attack. Also spelled Mairbek Shebikhanov.
- Muslim Said-Aliyevich Shaybekhanov (20) – A Chechen from Engenoi who lived in Psedakh, Ingushetia.
- Buran Tetradze (31) – Allegedly a GeorgiaGeorgia (country)Georgia is a sovereign state in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, it is bounded to the west by the Black Sea, to the north by Russia, to the southwest by Turkey, to the south by Armenia, and to the southeast by Azerbaijan. The capital of...
n and a native of RustaviRustaviRustavi is a city in the southeast of Georgia, in the province of Kvemo Kartli, situated southeast of the capital Tbilisi. It stands on the Mtkvari River at...
in Georgia. His identity/existence was refuted by Georgia's security minister. - Issa Torshkhoyev (26) – An Ingush native of Malgobek, Ingushetia. He was wanted since the shootout in 2003 when his home was raided by the police. His family asserted that his interest in joining the Chechen militant movement was incited when Torshkhoyev witnessed five of his close friends being killed by Russian security forces during the same raid. His father, who was brought in to identify his body, reportedly claimed that the body was not that of his son. Also spelled Isa/Torshkhoev.
- Issa Zhumaldinovich Tarshkhoyev (23) – An Ingush from Malgobek, Ingushetia. He was arrested for armed robbery in 1999 but later released.
- Bei-Alla Tsechoyev (31) – An Ingush, brother of Musa, had a prior conviction for possessing illegal firearms. Also spelled Bay/Ala.
- Musa Tsechoyev (35) – An Ingush, brother of Bei-Alla. Native of Sagopshi, Ingushetia, owned the truck that drove the insurgents to the school.
- Timur Magomedovich Tsokiyev (31) – An Ingush from Sagopshi, Ingushetia. Also spelled Tsokiev.
- Aslan Akhmedovich Yaryzhev (22) – An Ingush from Malgobek, Ingushetia.
Female
In April 2005, the identity of the shahidka
Shahidka
Shahidka |shahid]]), sometimes called "Black Widow", is a term for Islamist Chechen female suicide bombers, who made themselves known at the Moscow theater hostage crisis of October 2002...
female militants was revealed:
- Roza Nagayeva (30) – A Chechen woman from the village of Kirov-Yurt in Chechnya's Vedensky District, sister of Amnat Nagayeva, who is suspected of being the suicide bomber who blew up one of the two Russian airliners brought down on August 24, 2004. Roza Nagayeva was previously been named as having carried out the bombing of Moscow's Rizhskaya metro station on August 31, 2004.
- Mairam Taburova (27) – A Chechen woman from the village of Mair-Tub in Chechnya's Shalinsky DistrictShalinsky District, Chechen RepublicShalinsky District is an administrative and municipal district , one of the fifteen in the Chechen Republic, Russia. Its administrative center is the town of Shali...
. Also spelled Maryam. - Khaula Nazirova (45) – A woman from Grozny whose husband had supposedly been tortured to death by Russian security forces. Her 18-year-old son and her 16-year-old daughter, along with their cousins, were reportedly killed a year earlier when Russian forces attacked a school in Chechnya.
Kulayev's interrogation and trial
The captured suspect, 24-year-old Nur-Pashi KulayevNur-Pashi Kulayev
Nur-Pashi Kulayev , a native of Engenoi, Chechnya, is thought to be the sole survivor of the 32 hostage-takers in the 2004 Beslan school hostage crisis, although Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev denied the claim, stating that one other escaped....
, born in Chechnya, was identified by former hostages as one of the hostage-takers. The state-controlled Channel One
Channel One (Russia)
Channel One is the first television channel to broadcast in the Soviet Union. The channel was renamed Ostankino Channel 1 in 1991, after the Soviet Union broke up and the Russian SFSR became the Russian Federation. According to a recent government publication, the Russian government controls 51%...
showed fragments of Kulayev's interrogation in which he said his group was led by a Chechnya-born man nicknamed Polkovnik and by the North Ossetia native Vladimir Khodov. According to Kulayev, Polkovnik shot another militant and detonated two female suicide bombers because they objected to capturing children.
In May 2005, Kulayev was a defendant in a court in the republic of North Ossetia. He was charged with murder
Murder
Murder is the unlawful killing, with malice aforethought, of another human being, and generally this state of mind distinguishes murder from other forms of unlawful homicide...
, terrorism, kidnapping, and other crimes and pleaded guilty on seven of the counts; many former hostages denounced the trial as a "smoke screen" and "farce
Farce
In theatre, a farce is a comedy which aims at entertaining the audience by means of unlikely, extravagant, and improbable situations, disguise and mistaken identity, verbal humour of varying degrees of sophistication, which may include word play, and a fast-paced plot whose speed usually increases,...
". Some of the relatives of the victims, who used the trial in their attempts to accuse the authorities, even called for a pardon
Pardon
Clemency means the forgiveness of a crime or the cancellation of the penalty associated with it. It is a general concept that encompasses several related procedures: pardoning, commutation, remission and reprieves...
for Kulayev so he can speak freely about what happened. The director of the FSB, Nikolai Patrushev, was summoned to give evidence, but he did not attend the trial. Ten days later, on May 26, 2006, Nur-Pashi Kulayev was sentenced to death, despite the official moratorium
Moratorium (law)
A moratorium is a delay or suspension of an activity or a law. In a legal context, it may refer to the temporary suspension of a law to allow a legal challenge to be carried out....
on the death penalty in Russia, which was then immediately commuted to life in prison; no appeal was filed by either the defendant or prosecutor. Kulayev later disappeared in the Russian prison system. Following questions about whether Kulayev had been killed or died in prison, Russian government officials said in 2007 that he was alive and awaiting the start of his sentence.
Investigation by federal prosecutors
Family members of the victims of the attacks have accused the security forces of incompetence, and have demanded that authorities be held accountable. Putin personally promised to the Mothers of BeslanMothers of Beslan
Mothers of Beslan or Beslan Mothers' Committee is a support and advocacy group of parents whose children were among the more than 365 victims of the 2004 Beslan school hostage crisis in North Ossetia-Alania. The group is led by chairwoman Susanna Dudiyeva and has nearly 200 members...
group it would be an "objective investigation". On December 26, 2005, Russian prosecutors investigating the siege on the school declared that authorities had made no mistakes whatsoever.
Torshin's parliamentary commission
At a press conference with foreign journalists on September 6, 2004, Vladimir Putin rejected the prospect of an open public inquiryPublic inquiry
A Tribunal of Inquiry is an official review of events or actions ordered by a government body in Common Law countries such as the United Kingdom, Ireland or Canada. Such a public inquiry differs from a Royal Commission in that a public inquiry accepts evidence and conducts its hearings in a more...
, but cautiously agreed with an idea of a parliamentary investigation led by the State Duma, dominated by the pro-Kremlin parties.
In November 2004, the Interfax news agency reported Alexander Torshin, head of the parliamentary commission, as saying that there was evidence of involvement by "a foreign intelligence agency
Intelligence agency
An intelligence agency is a governmental agency that is devoted to information gathering for purposes of national security and defence. Means of information gathering may include espionage, communication interception, cryptanalysis, cooperation with other institutions, and evaluation of public...
" (he declined to say which). On December 22, 2006, the Russian parliamentary commission ended their investigation into the incident. Their report concluded that the number of gunmen who stormed the school was 32 and laid much blame on the North Ossetian police, stating that there was a severe shortcoming in security measures, but also criticized authorities for under-reporting the number of hostages involved. In addition, the commission said the attack on the school was premeditated by Chechen rebel leadership including the moderate leader Aslan Maskhadov. In another controversial move, the commission claimed that the shoot-out that ended the siege was instigated by the hostage-takers, not security forces. About the "grounded" decision to use flamethowers, Torshin said that "international law
International law
Public international law concerns the structure and conduct of sovereign states; analogous entities, such as the Holy See; and intergovernmental organizations. To a lesser degree, international law also may affect multinational corporations and individuals, an impact increasingly evolving beyond...
does not prohibit using them against terrorists." Ella Kesayeva, an activist
Activism
Activism consists of intentional efforts to bring about social, political, economic, or environmental change. Activism can take a wide range of forms from writing letters to newspapers or politicians, political campaigning, economic activism such as boycotts or preferentially patronizing...
who leads Beslan support group, suggested that the report was meant as a signal that Putin and his circle were no longer interested in having a discussion about crisis.
On August 28, 2006, Yuri Savelyev, Russian Member of Parliament
Member of Parliament
A Member of Parliament is a representative of the voters to a :parliament. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, the term applies specifically to members of the lower house, as upper houses often have a different title, such as senate, and thus also have different titles for its members,...
in the federal parliamentary inquiry panel, publicized his own report which he said is proving that Russian forces deliberately stormed the school using maximum force. According to Savelyev, a weapons and explosives expert, special forces fired rocket-propelled grenades without warning as a prelude to an armed assault, ignoring apparently ongoing negotiations. In February 2007, two members of the commission (Savelyev and Yuri Ivanov) denounced the investigation as a cover-up
Cover-up
A cover-up is an attempt, whether successful or not, to conceal evidence of wrong-doing, error, incompetence or other embarrassing information...
, and the Kremlin's official version of events as fabricated. They refused to sign off on the Torshin's report.
Trials of the local police officials
Three local policemen of the Pravoberezhny DistrictPravoberezhny District
Pravoberezhny District is the name of several administrative and municipal districts in Russia. The name literally means "located on the right bank".-Districts of the federal subjects:...
ROVD (district militsiya
Militsiya
Militsiya or militia is used as an official name of the civilian police in several former communist states, despite its original military connotation...
unit) were the only officials put on trial over the massacre
Massacre
A massacre is an event with a heavy death toll.Massacre may also refer to:-Entertainment:*Massacre , a DC Comics villain*Massacre , a 1932 drama film starring Richard Barthelmess*Massacre, a 1956 Western starring Dane Clark...
, accused of failing to stop gunmen seizing the school and charged with negligence
Negligence
Negligence is a failure to exercise the care that a reasonably prudent person would exercise in like circumstances. The area of tort law known as negligence involves harm caused by carelessness, not intentional harm.According to Jay M...
. On May 30, 2007, Pravoberezhny Court's judge granted an amnesty
Amnesty
Amnesty is a legislative or executive act by which a state restores those who may have been guilty of an offense against it to the positions of innocent people, without changing the laws defining the offense. It includes more than pardon, in as much as it obliterates all legal remembrance of the...
to them. In response, a group of dozens local women then rioted and ransacked the courtroom, smashing windows, overturning furniture and tearing down a Russian flag. Victims' groups said the trial had been a whitewash
Whitewash (censorship)
To whitewash is a metaphor meaning to gloss over or cover up vices, crimes or scandals or to exonerate by means of a perfunctory investigation or through biased presentation of data. It is especially used in the context of corporations, governments or other organizations.- Etymology :Its first...
designed to protect their superiors from blame. The victims of the Beslan terror act said they are going to appeal against the court judgement.
In June 2007, a court in Kabardino-Balkaria
Kabardino-Balkaria
The Kabardino-Balkar Republic , or Kabardino-Balkaria , is a federal subject of Russia located in the North Caucasus. Population: -Geography:The republic is situated in the North Caucasus mountains, with plains in the northern part....
charged two Malgobeksky District
Malgobeksky District
Malgobeksky District is an administrative and municipal district , one of the four in the Republic of Ingushetia, Russia. Its administrative center is the town of Malgobek . District's population: 61,617 ;...
ROVD police officials (Mukhazhir Yevloyev and Akhmed Kotiyev) with negligence, accusing them of failing to prevent the attackers from setting up their training and staging camp in Ingushetia. The two pleaded innocent, the court said. The acquittal
Acquittal
In the common law tradition, an acquittal formally certifies the accused is free from the charge of an offense, as far as the criminal law is concerned. This is so even where the prosecution is abandoned nolle prosequi...
verdict came in October 2007, and was upheld by the Supreme Court of Ingushetia in March 2008. The victims said they are going to appeal against the decision to the European Court for Human Rights.
Allegations of incompetence and rights violations
The handling of the siege by Vladimir Putin's administration was criticized by a number of observers and grassroots organizations, amongst them the Mothers of Beslan and Voice of BeslanVoice of Beslan
Voice of Beslan is a grassroots non-governmental organization created in the aftermath of the 2004 North Ossetian Beslan school hostage crisis, as a splinter group of more radical members of the Mothers of Beslan support and advocacy group of parents of children who were among the victims.The...
groups. Soon after the crisis, the independent MP Vladimir Ryzhkov
Vladimir Ryzhkov
Vladimir Aleksandrovich Ryzhkov is a Russian Professor of the Higher School of Economics , Russian independent politician, Russian State Duma member ....
blamed "the top leadership" of Russia. Initially, the European Union
European Union
The European Union is an economic and political union of 27 independent member states which are located primarily in Europe. The EU traces its origins from the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Economic Community , formed by six countries in 1958...
also criticized the response.
Criticism, including by Beslan residents (the survivors and the relatives of the victims), centered on the allegations that the storming of the school was ruthless, citing the confirmed use of heavy weapons, such as tanks and Shmel flamethrowers (described by a source associated with the U.S. military as "just about the most vicious weapon you can imagine – igniting the air, sucking the oxygen
Oxygen
Oxygen is the element with atomic number 8 and represented by the symbol O. Its name derives from the Greek roots ὀξύς and -γενής , because at the time of naming, it was mistakenly thought that all acids required oxygen in their composition...
out of an enclosed area and creating a massive pressure wave crushing anything unfortunate enough to have lived through the conflagration"). a claim that the authorities flatly deny. Some human rights
Human rights
Human rights are "commonly understood as inalienable fundamental rights to which a person is inherently entitled simply because she or he is a human being." Human rights are thus conceived as universal and egalitarian . These rights may exist as natural rights or as legal rights, in both national...
activists claim that at least 80 percent of the hostages were killed by indiscriminate Russian fire. According to Felgenhauer, "it was not a hostage rescue operation... but an army operation aimed at wiping out the terrorists." David Satter
David Satter
David Satter is a former Moscow correspondent and expert on Russia and the Soviet Union who wrote books about the decline and fall of the Soviet Union and the rise of post-Soviet Russia.-Life and career:...
of the Hudson Institute
Hudson Institute
The Hudson Institute is an American think tank founded in 1961, in Croton-on-Hudson, New York, by futurist, military strategist, and systems theorist Herman Kahn and his colleagues at the RAND Corporation...
said the incident "presents a chilling portrait of the Russian leadership and its total disregard for human life".
The provincial government and police were criticized by the locals for having allowed the attack to take place, especially since police roadblock
Roadblock
A roadblock is a temporary installation set up to control or block traffic along a road. The reasons for one could be:*Roadworks*Temporary road closure during special events*Police chase*Robbery*Sobriety checkpoint...
s on the way to Beslan were removed shortly before the hostage taking. Many blamed rampant corruption allowing militants to simply bribe their way through the checkpoints (in fact, this was even what they openly boasted to their hostages), while others say the militants used the back roads used by smugglers
Smuggling
Smuggling is the clandestine transportation of goods or persons, such as out of a building, into a prison, or across an international border, in violation of applicable laws or other regulations.There are various motivations to smuggle...
in collusion with police. Yulia Latynina
Yulia Latynina
Yulia Leonidovna Latynina is a Russian journalist, writer and radio host. She works at the radio station Echo of Moscow. She also writes for Novaya Gazeta and The Moscow Times.-Writer, journalist and radio host:...
alleged that Major Gurazhev was captured after he approached the militants' truck to demand a bribe for what he thought was an oil-smuggling operation. It was also alleged the federal police knew of the time and place of the planned attack; according to internal police documents obtained by Novaya Gazeta
Novaya Gazeta
Novaya Gazeta is a Russian newspaper well known in the country for its critical and investigative coverage of Russian political and social affairs....
, the Moscow MVD knew about the hostage taking four hours in advance, having learned this from a militant captured in Chechnya. According to Basayev, the road to Beslan was cleared of roadblocks because the FSB planned to ambush
Ambush
An ambush is a long-established military tactic, in which the aggressors take advantage of concealment and the element of surprise to attack an unsuspecting enemy from concealed positions, such as among dense underbrush or behind hilltops...
the group later, believing the rebels' aim was to seize the parliament of North Ossetia in Vladikavkaz.
Critics also charged that the authorities did not organize the siege properly, including failing to keep the scene secure from entry by civilians, while the emergency service
Emergency service
Emergency services are organizations which ensure public safety and health by addressing different emergencies. Some agencies exist solely for addressing certain types of emergencies whilst others deal with ad hoc emergencies as part of their normal responsibilities...
s were not prepared during the 52 hours of the crisis. The Russian government has been also heavily criticized by many of the local people who, days and even months after the siege, did not know whether their children were alive or dead (the hospitals were isolated from the outside world). Two months after the crisis, human remains and identity documents were found by a local driver Muran Katsanov in the garbage landfill
Landfill
A landfill site , is a site for the disposal of waste materials by burial and is the oldest form of waste treatment...
at the outskirts of Beslan; the discovery prompted further outrage.
In addition, there were serious accusations that federal officials had not earnestly tried to negotiate with the hostage-takers (including the alleged threat from Moscow to arrest President Dzasokhov if he came to negotiate) and deliberately provided incorrect and inconsistent reports of the situation to the media (detailed below).
Independent reports
The report by Yuri Savelyev, a dissenting parliamentary investigator and one of Russia's leading rocket scientists, blamed the responsibility for the final massacre on actions of the Russian forces and the highest-placed officials in the federal government. Savelyev's 2006 report, devoting 280 pages to determining responsibility for the initial blast, concludes that the authorities decided to storm the school building, but wanted to create the impression they were acting in response to actions taken by the terrorists. (These allegations are discussed in more detail elsewhere in this article.) Savelyev, the only expert on the physics of combustionCombustion
Combustion or burning is the sequence of exothermic chemical reactions between a fuel and an oxidant accompanied by the production of heat and conversion of chemical species. The release of heat can result in the production of light in the form of either glowing or a flame...
on the commission, accused Torshin of "deliberate falsification".
A separate public inquiry by the North Ossetian parliament (headed by Kesayev) concluded on November 29, 2005, that both local and federal law enforcement agencies and officials mishandled the situation.
European Court complaint
On June 26, 2007, 89 relatives of victims lodged a joint complaintComplaint
In legal terminology, a complaint is a formal legal document that sets out the facts and legal reasons that the filing party or parties In legal terminology, a complaint is a formal legal document that sets out the facts and legal reasons (see: cause of action) that the filing party or parties In...
against Russia with the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). The applicants say their rights were violated both during the hostage-taking and the trials that followed. ECHR was flooded by a complaints against Russia, many of them from Chechnya, what the Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Watch is an international non-governmental organization that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. Its headquarters are in New York City and it has offices in Berlin, Beirut, Brussels, Chicago, Geneva, Johannesburg, London, Los Angeles, Moscow, Paris, San Francisco, Tokyo,...
called "the last hope for the victims".
Conspiracy Theories
Assassinated FSB defector Alexander LitvinenkoAlexander Litvinenko
Alexander Valterovich Litvinenko was an officer who served in the Soviet KGB and its Russian successor, the Federal Security Service ....
has suggested that the Russian secret services must have been aware of the plot beforehand, and therefore that they must have themselves organized the attack as a false flag
False flag
False flag operations are covert operations designed to deceive the public in such a way that the operations appear as though they are being carried out by other entities. The name is derived from the military concept of flying false colors; that is flying the flag of a country other than one's own...
operation. Before his death, Litvinenko alleged that because of the fact that the hostage-takers had previously been in FSB custody for committing terrorist attacks, it is inconceivable that they would have been released and still been able to carry out attacks independently. He said that they would only have been freed if they were of use to the FSB, and that even in the case that they were freed without being turned into FSB assets, they would be under a strict surveillance
Surveillance
Surveillance is the monitoring of the behavior, activities, or other changing information, usually of people. It is sometimes done in a surreptitious manner...
regime that would not have allowed them to carry out the Beslan attack unnoticed. Some of the Mothers of Beslan have also alleged that the hostage taking was an inside job
Inside job
Inside job refers to a crime committed by a person with a position of trust, such as insider trading.Inside job may also refer to:* Inside Job , a 2005 novella by Connie Willis* Inside Job , a 2000 studio album by Don Henley...
, citing as evidence the fact that the militants used weapons that had been planted in the school prior to the incident. Ella Kesayeva, co-chair of the group Voice of Beslan has, similar to Alexander Litvinenko, drawn attention to how many of the hostage-takers were either released from government custody or evaded the authorities despite their high profiles right before the attacks occurred. Writing for the oppositional newspaper Novaya Gazeta
Novaya Gazeta
Novaya Gazeta is a Russian newspaper well known in the country for its critical and investigative coverage of Russian political and social affairs....
, she concluded that "the so-called Beslan terrorists were agents of our own special forces – UBOP [Center for Countering Extremism] and FSB."
Disinformation and suppression of information
According to a poll by Levada-Center conducted a week after Beslan crisis, 83% of polled Russians believed that the government was hiding at least a part of the truth about the Beslan events from them.Russian television reporting and false information
In opposition to the coverage on foreign television news channels (such as CNNCNN
Cable News Network is a U.S. cable news channel founded in 1980 by Ted Turner. Upon its launch, CNN was the first channel to provide 24-hour television news coverage, and the first all-news television channel in the United States...
and the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
), the crisis was not broadcast live by the three major state-owned Russian television networks. The two main state-owned broadcasters, Channel One and Rossiya, did not even interrupt their regular programming following the school seizure. After explosions and gunfire started on the third day, NTV Russia
NTV Russia
NTV is a Russian television channel. As a subsidiary of Vladimir Gusinsky's company Media-Most, it was a pioneer in the post-Soviet independent television media, but was later taken over by state-owned Gazprom.- History :...
(the main television channel owned by Gazprom
Gazprom
Open Joint Stock Company Gazprom is the largest extractor of natural gas in the world and the largest Russian company. Its headquarters are in Cheryomushki District, South-Western Administrative Okrug, Moscow...
) shifted away from the scenes of mayhem to broadcast a World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
soap opera
Soap opera
A soap opera, sometimes called "soap" for short, is an ongoing, episodic work of dramatic fiction presented in serial format on radio or as television programming. The name soap opera stems from the original dramatic serials broadcast on radio that had soap manufacturers, such as Procter & Gamble,...
.
According to the poll by Ekho Moskvy radio station, 92% of the people polled said that Russian TV channels concealed parts of information.
Russian state-controlled television only reported official information about the number of hostages during the course of the crisis. The number of 354 people was persistently given, as initially stated by Lev Dzugayev, the press secretary
Press secretary
A press secretary or press officer is a senior advisor who provides advice on how to deal with the news media and, using news management techniques, helps their employer to maintain a positive public image and avoid negative media coverage....
of Dzasokhov (after the crisis, Dzugayev was promoted and made Minister for Culture and Mass Communications of the republic) and Valery Andreyev, the chief of the republican FSB (though it was later claimed that Dzugayev only disseminated information given to him by "Russian presidential staff who were located in Beslan from September 1"). Torshin laid the blame squarely at Andreyev, for whom he reserved special scorn.
This deliberately false figure had grave consequences for the treatment of the hostages by their angered captors (hostage-takers were even reported saying "Maybe we should kill enough of you to get down to that number") and contributed to the declaration of "hunger strike". One inquiry has suggested that it may have prompted the militants to kill a group of male hostages who were shot on the first day. The government disinformation
Disinformation
Disinformation is intentionally false or inaccurate information that is spread deliberately. For this reason, it is synonymous with and sometimes called black propaganda. It is an act of deception and false statements to convince someone of untruth...
also sparked the incidents of violence by the local residents, aware of the real numbers, against the members of Russian and foreign media.
On September 8, 2004, several leading Russian and international human rights organizations – including Amnesty International
Amnesty International
Amnesty International is an international non-governmental organisation whose stated mission is "to conduct research and generate action to prevent and end grave abuses of human rights, and to demand justice for those whose rights have been violated."Following a publication of Peter Benenson's...
, Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Watch
Human Rights Watch is an international non-governmental organization that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. Its headquarters are in New York City and it has offices in Berlin, Beirut, Brussels, Chicago, Geneva, Johannesburg, London, Los Angeles, Moscow, Paris, San Francisco, Tokyo,...
, Memorial
Memorial (society)
Memorial is an international historical and civil rights society that operates in a number of post-Soviet states. It focuses on recording and publicising the Soviet Union's totalitarian past, but also monitors human rights in post-Soviet states....
and Moscow Helsinki Group
Moscow Helsinki Group
The Moscow Helsinki Group is an influential human rights monitoring non-governmental organization, originally established in what was then the Soviet Union; it still operates in Russia....
– issued a joint statement in which they pointed out the responsibility that Russian authorities bore in disseminating false information:
"We are also seriously concerned with the fact that authorities concealed the true scale of the crisis by, inter aliaInter Alia-Track listing:# Inter Alia# Outfox'd # Righteous Badass # The Altogether feat. Bix, Apt, UNIVERSE ARM and Cal# The Day-to-Daily# Trouble Brewing # The Prestidigitator# The Force...
, misinformingDisinformationDisinformation is intentionally false or inaccurate information that is spread deliberately. For this reason, it is synonymous with and sometimes called black propaganda. It is an act of deception and false statements to convince someone of untruth...
Russian society about the number of hostages. We call on Russian authorities to conduct a comprehensive investigation into the circumstances of the Beslan events which should include an examination of how authorities informed the whole society and the families of the hostages. We call on making the results of such an investigation public."
The Moscow daily Moskovskij Komsomolets ran a rubric headlined "Chronicle of Lies", detailing various initial reports put out by government officials about the hostage taking, which later turned out to be false.
Incidents involving Russian and foreign journalists
In several incidents reporters critical of the Russian government could not get to Beslan during the crisis. They included Andrey Babitsky, a dissident Russian journalist with the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, who was indicted on hooliganismHooliganism
Hooliganism refers to unruly, destructive, aggressive and bullying behaviour. Such behaviour is commonly associated with sports fans. The term can also apply to general rowdy behaviour and vandalism, often under the influence of alcohol and/or drugs....
after a brawl with two men who picked a fight with him in the Moscow Vnukovo Airport and sentenced to a 15-day arrest, and the chief of the Moscow bureau of the Arab TV channel Al Jazeera, who was framed into the possession of a round of ammunition at the airfield in Mineralnye Vody
Mineralnye Vody
Mineralnye Vody is a town in Stavropol Krai, Russia, which lies along the Kuma River and the main rail line between Rostov-on-Don and Baku . Population:...
.
The late Novaya Gazeta journalist Anna Politkovskaya
Anna Politkovskaya
Anna Stepanovna Politkovskaya was a Russian journalist, author, and human rights activist known for her opposition to the Chechen conflict and then-President of Russia Vladimir Putin...
, who had negotiated during the 2002 Moscow siege, was twice prevented by the authorities from boarding a flight. When she eventually succeeded, she fell into a coma
Coma
In medicine, a coma is a state of unconsciousness, lasting more than 6 hours in which a person cannot be awakened, fails to respond normally to painful stimuli, light or sound, lacks a normal sleep-wake cycle and does not initiate voluntary actions. A person in a state of coma is described as...
after being poison
Poison
In the context of biology, poisons are substances that can cause disturbances to organisms, usually by chemical reaction or other activity on the molecular scale, when a sufficient quantity is absorbed by an organism....
ed aboard an airplane bound to Rostov-on-Don
Rostov-on-Don
-History:The mouth of the Don River has been of great commercial and cultural importance since the ancient times. It was the site of the Greek colony Tanais, of the Genoese fort Tana, and of the Turkish fortress Azak...
. American journalist Larisa Alexandrovna
Larisa Alexandrovna
Larisa Alexandrovna is a journalist, essayist, and poet. She has served as the Managing Editor of Investigative News of The Raw Story for the last three years, and contributes opinion and columns to online publications such as Alternet. She is also an American blogger for the Huffington Post and...
of The Raw Story
The Raw Story
The Raw Story is a progressive news, politics and weblog publication founded in 2004. Updated continuously, it is known primarily for its investigative reporting...
has suggested that Politkovskaya might have been later murdered in Moscow
Anna Politkovskaya assassination
The assassination of Anna Politkovskaya , the Russian journalist, writer and human rights activist, took place on Saturday, 7 October 2006. She was well known for her opposition to the Chechen conflict and criticism of Russian President Vladimir Putin...
because she had discovered evidence of the Russian government's complicity in Beslan.
According to the report by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe
Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe
The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe is the world's largest security-oriented intergovernmental organization. Its mandate includes issues such as arms control, human rights, freedom of the press and fair elections...
(OSCE), several correspondents were detained or otherwise harassed after arriving in Beslan (including Russians Anna Gorbatova and Oksana Semyonova from Novye Izvestia, Madina Shavlokhova from Moskovskij Komsomolets, Elena Milashina
Elena Milashina
Elena Milashina is a Russian investigative journalist for Novaya Gazeta.In October 2009 she was awarded Human Rights Watch's Alison Des Forges Award for Extraordinary Activism....
from Novaya Gazeta, and Simon Ostrovskiy from The Moscow Times
The Moscow Times
The Moscow Times is an English-language daily newspaper published in Moscow, Russia since 1992. The circulation in 2008 stood at 35,000 copies and the newspaper is typically given out for free at places English-language "expats" attend, including hotels, cafés and restaurants, as well as by...
). Several foreign journalists were also briefly detained, including a group of journalists from Polish
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
Gazeta Wyborcza
Gazeta Wyborcza
Gazeta Wyborcza is a leading Polish newspaper. It covers the gamut of political, international and general news. Like all the Polish newspapers, it is printed on compact-sized paper, and is published by the multimedia corporation Agora SA...
, French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
Libération
Libération
Libération is a French daily newspaper founded in Paris by Jean-Paul Sartre and Serge July in 1973 in the wake of the protest movements of May 1968. Originally a leftist newspaper, it has undergone a number of shifts during the 1980s and 1990s...
and British The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
. Many foreign journalists were exposed to pressure from the security forces and the materials were confiscated from TV crews from ZDF
ZDF
Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen , ZDF, is a public-service German television broadcaster based in Mainz . It is run as an independent non-profit institution, which was founded by the German federal states . The ZDF is financed by television licence fees called GEZ and advertising revenues...
and ARD
ARD (broadcaster)
ARD is a joint organization of Germany's regional public-service broadcasters...
(Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
), AP Television News
Associated Press Television News
Associated Press Television News, abbreviated as either AP Television News or APTN, is a global video news agency.-About:AP Television News is the video division of the Associated Press. It provides many of the world's broadcasters with a round-the-clock continuous feed of news, sports,...
(USA), and Rustavi 2
Rustavi 2
Rustavi 2 Broadcasting Company , better known as Rustavi 2, is the most successful private television broadcasting company in Georgia. The Rustavi, based in Tbilisi, was founded in 1994 in the town of Rustavi. It is a privately owned free to air terrestrial broadcaster that currently reaches around...
(Georgia
Georgia (country)
Georgia is a sovereign state in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, it is bounded to the west by the Black Sea, to the north by Russia, to the southwest by Turkey, to the south by Armenia, and to the southeast by Azerbaijan. The capital of...
). The crew of Rustavi 2 was arrested; the Georgian Minister of Health said that the correspondent Nana Lezhava, who had been kept for five days in the Russian pre-trial detention centers, had been poisoned with dangerous psychotropic drugs (like Politkovskaya, Lezhava passed out after being given a cup of tea). The crew from another Georgian TV channel Mze
Mže
The Mže is a 107 km long river in the Czech Republic. Its source is situated in the Griesbach Forest , Germany, near the village of Asch, in the municipality of Mähring, Tirschenreuth district. It forms the state boundary on the short distance of 3 kilometers and then finally enters the Czech...
was expelled from Beslan.
Raf Shakirov, chief editor of the Russia's leading Izvestia
Izvestia
Izvestia is a long-running high-circulation daily newspaper in Russia. The word "izvestiya" in Russian means "delivered messages", derived from the verb izveshchat . In the context of newspapers it is usually translated as "news" or "reports".-Origin:The newspaper began as the News of the...
newspaper, was forced to resign after criticism by the major shareholders of both style and content of the September 4, 2004 issue. In contrast to the less emotional coverage by other Russian newspapers, Izvestia had featured large pictures of dead or injured hostages. It also expressed doubts about the government's version of events.
Secret video materials
The video tape made by the hostage-takers and given to Ruslan Aushev on the second day was declared by the officials as being "blank". Aushev himself did not watch the tape before he handed it to government agents. A fragment of tape shot by the hostage-takers was shown on Russian NTV television several days after the crisis. (See the video.) Another fragment of a tape shot by the hostage-takers was acquired by media and publicised in January 2005. (See the video (unavaible in Russia).)In July 2007, the Mothers of Beslan asked the FSB to declassify video and audio archives on Beslan, saying there should be no secrets in the investigation. They did not receive any official answer to this request. However, the Mothers received anonymously
Anonymity
Anonymity is derived from the Greek word ἀνωνυμία, anonymia, meaning "without a name" or "namelessness". In colloquial use, anonymity typically refers to the state of an individual's personal identity, or personally identifiable information, being publicly unknown.There are many reasons why a...
a video which they disclosed saying it might prove that the Russian security forces started the massacre by firing rocket-propelled grenades on the besieged building. The film had been kept secret by the authorities for nearly three years, before being officially released by the Mothers on September 4, 2007. The graphic film apparently shows the prosecutors and military experts surveying the unexploded shrapnel-based bombs of the militants and structural damage in the school in Beslan shortly after the massacre. Footage shows a large hole in the wall of the sports hall, with a man saying: "The hole in the wall is not from this [kind of] explosion. Apparently someone fired [there]," adding that many victims bear no sign of shrapnel wounds. In another scene filmed next morning, a uniformed investigator points out that most of the IEDs in the school actually did not go off, and then pays close attention to a hole in the floor, which he calls a "puncture of an explosive character".
Government response
In general, the criticism was denied by the Russian government. President Vladimir Putin specifically dismissed the foreign criticism as Cold WarCold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
mentality and said that the West wants to "pull the strings so that Russia won't raise its head."
The Russian government defended the use of tanks and other heavy weaponry, arguing that it was used only after surviving hostages escaped from the school. However, this contradicts the eyewitness accounts, including by the former hostages and reporters. According to the survivors and other witnesses many hostages were seriously wounded and could not possibly escape by themselves, while others were kept by the militants as human shield
Human shield
Human shield is a military and political term describing the deliberate placement of civilians in or around combat targets to deter an enemy from attacking those targets. It may also refer to the use of civilians to literally shield combatants during attacks, by forcing the civilians to march in...
s and moved through the building.
Deputy Prosecutor General of Russia
Prosecutor General of Russia
The Prosecutor General of Russia heads the system of official prosecution in courts known as the Office of the Prosecutor General of Russian Federation ....
Nikolai Shepel, acting as deputy prosecutor at the trial of Kulayev, found no fault with the security forces in handling the hostage crisis: "According to the conclusions of the investigation, the expert commission did not find any violations that could be responsible for the harmful consequences." Shepel acknowledged that commandos fired flamethrowers, but said this could not have sparked the fire that caused most of deaths; he also said that the troops did not use napalm
Napalm
Napalm is a thickening/gelling agent generally mixed with gasoline or a similar fuel for use in an incendiary device, primarily as an anti-personnel weapon...
during the attack.
To address doubts, Putin launched a Duma parliamentary investigation led by Alexander Torshin, resulting in the report which criticized the federal government only indirectly and instead put blame for "a whole number of blunders and shortcomings" on local authorities. The findings of the federal and the North Ossetian commissions differed widely in many main aspects. Deputy Prosecutor General Vladimir Kolesnikov
Vladimir Kolesnikov
Vladimir Ilyich Kolesnikov is a Russian lawyer and politician.In 1995–2000 he was a First Deputy Interior Minister of Russia...
, sent by Putin in September 2005 to investigate the circumstances, concluded on the 30th of the same month that "the actions of the military personnel were justified, and there are no grounds to open a criminal investigation."
Also in 2005, previously unreleased documents by the national commission in Moscow were made available to Der Spiegel
Der Spiegel
Der Spiegel is a German weekly news magazine published in Hamburg. It is one of Europe's largest publications of its kind, with a weekly circulation of more than one million.-Overview:...
. According to the paper, "instead of calling for self-criticism
Self-criticism
Self-criticism refers to the pointing out of things critical/important to one's own beliefs, thoughts, actions, behaviour or results; it can form part of private, personal reflection or a group discussion.-Philosophy:...
in the wake of the disaster, the commission recommended the Russian government to crack down harder."
Dismissals and trials
Three local top officials lost their posts in the aftermath of the tragedy:- North Ossetian Interior MinisterInterior ministerAn interior ministry is a government ministry typically responsible for policing, national security, and immigration matters. The ministry is often headed by a minister of the interior or minister of home affairs...
Kazbek Dzantiyev resigned shortly after the crisis, saying that after what happened in Beslan, he "[didn't] have the right to occupy this post as an officer and a man." - Valery Andreyev, the chief of the Ossetia's FSB, also submitted his resignation soon after. However, he was later elevated to the prestigious position of Deputy RectorRectorThe word rector has a number of different meanings; it is widely used to refer to an academic, religious or political administrator...
of FSB Academy. - Alexander Dzasokhov, the head of North Ossetia, resigned his post on May 31, 2005, after a series of demonstrationDemonstration (people)A demonstration or street protest is action by a mass group or collection of groups of people in favor of a political or other cause; it normally consists of walking in a mass march formation and either beginning with or meeting at a designated endpoint, or rally, to hear speakers.Actions such as...
s against him in Beslan and a public pressure from Mothers of Beslan on Putin to have him dismissed. (President Zyazikov of Ingushetia was forced to resign in 2008 but for unrelated reasons, following the shooting death in police detention of oppositionist journalist Magomed YevloyevMagomed YevloyevMagomed Yakhyаvich Yevloyev was an Ingush journalist, lawyer, and businessman, and the owner of the news website Ingushetiya.ru, known for being highly critical of Murat Zyazikov, the President of Ingushetia, a federal subject of Russia bordering Chechnya...
.)
Five Ossetian and Ingush police officers were tried in the local courts; all of them were subsequently amnestied or acquitted in 2007. As of December 2009, none of the Russian federal officials at any rank or level suffered any consequences in connection with the Beslan events.
Escalation of the Ingush-Ossetian hostility
Nur-Pashi Kulayev claimed that attacking a school and targeting mothers and young children was not merely coincidental, but was deliberately designed for maximum outrage with the purpose of igniting a wider war in the Caucasus. According to this provocationProvocation (legal)
In criminal law, provocation is a possible defense by excuse or exculpation alleging a sudden or temporary loss of control as a response to another's provocative conduct sufficient to justify an acquittal, a mitigated sentence or a conviction for a lesser charge...
theory, the attackers hoped that the mostly Orthodox
Russian Orthodox Church
The Russian Orthodox Church or, alternatively, the Moscow Patriarchate The ROC is often said to be the largest of the Eastern Orthodox churches in the world; including all the autocephalous churches under its umbrella, its adherents number over 150 million worldwide—about half of the 300 million...
Ossetians would attack their mostly-Muslim
Islam
Islam . The most common are and . : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...
Ingush and Chechen neighbours to seek revenge, encouraging ethnic and religious hatred and strife throughout the North Caucasus. North Ossetia and Ingushetia had previously been involved in a brief, but bloody conflict in 1992 over disputed land in the North Ossetian Prigorodny District
Prigorodny District, Republic of North Ossetia-Alania
Prigorodny District is an administrative and municipal district , one of the eight in the Republic of North Ossetia–Alania, Russia. Its administrative center is the rural locality of Oktyabrskoye...
, leaving up to 1,000 dead and some 40,000 to 60,000 displaced person
Displaced person
A displaced person is a person who has been forced to leave his or her native place, a phenomenon known as forced migration.- Origin of term :...
s, mostly Ingush. Indeed, shortly after the Beslan massacre, 3,000 people demonstrated in Vladikavkaz calling for revenge against the ethnic Ingush.
The expected backlash against neighbouring nations failed to materialise on a massive scale (in one noted incident, a group of ethnic Ossetian soldiers led by a Russian officer detained two Chechen Spetsnaz
Spetsnaz
Spetsnaz, Specnaz tr: Voyska specialnogo naznacheniya; ) is an umbrella term for any special forces in Russian, literally "force of special purpose"...
soldiers and executed one of them). In July 2007, however, the office of the presidential envoy for the Southern Federal District
Southern Federal District
Southern Federal District is one of the eight federal districts of Russia. Its territory lies mostly on the Pontic-Caspian steppe. Its population was 13,856,700 according to the 2010 Census, living on an area of...
Dmitry Kozak
Dmitry Kozak
Dmitry Nikolayevich Kozak , is a Russian politician, serving since October 2008 as deputy Prime minister of the Russian Federation....
announced that a North Ossetian armed group engaged in abduction
Kidnapping
In criminal law, kidnapping is the taking away or transportation of a person against that person's will, usually to hold the person in false imprisonment, a confinement without legal authority...
s as retaliation for the Beslan school hostage taking (the first rumours of such attacks were reported in the Russian and foreign press already during and just after the hostage crisis). FSB Lieutenant Colonel Alikhan Kalimatov, sent from Moscow to investigate these cases, was shot dead by unidentified gunmen in September 2007.
Grabovoy affair and the charges against Beslan activists
In September 2005, the self-proclaimed faith healerFaith Healer
Faith Healer is a play by Brian Friel about the life of faith healer Francis Hardy as monologued through the shifting memories of Hardy, his wife, Grace, and stage manager, Teddy.-Synopsis:...
and miracle-maker Grigory Grabovoy
Grigory Grabovoy
Grigory Petrovich Grabovoy is a Russian psychic who claims the ability to abolish death, resurrect the dead, cure cancer and AIDS, teleport, and pinpoint and resolve at distance mechanical and electronic problems on airplanes, space stations, atomic electric power stations and any other...
had promised he could resurrect
Resurrection
Resurrection refers to the literal coming back to life of the biologically dead. It is used both with respect to particular individuals or the belief in a General Resurrection of the dead at the end of the world. The General Resurrection is featured prominently in Jewish, Christian, and Muslim...
the killed children for a large sum of money. Grabovoy was arrested and indicted of fraud
Fraud
In criminal law, a fraud is an intentional deception made for personal gain or to damage another individual; the related adjective is fraudulent. The specific legal definition varies by legal jurisdiction. Fraud is a crime, and also a civil law violation...
in April 2006, amidst the accusations that he was being used by the government as a tool to discredit the Mothers of Beslan.
In January 2008, the Voice of Beslan group, which in the previous year had been ordered to disband by a court, was charged by Russian prosecutors with "extremism
Extremism
Extremism is any ideology or political act far outside the perceived political center of a society; or otherwise claimed to violate common moral standards...
" over their 2005 appeals to the European Parliament
European Parliament
The European Parliament is the directly elected parliamentary institution of the European Union . Together with the Council of the European Union and the Commission, it exercises the legislative function of the EU and it has been described as one of the most powerful legislatures in the world...
to help establish international
International
----International mostly means something that involves more than one country. The term international as a word means involvement of, interaction between or encompassing more than one nation, or generally beyond national boundaries...
investigation. This was soon followed with other charges, some of them relating to the 2007 court incident. As of February 2008, the group was charged in total of four different criminal cases.
Miscellaneous
In March 2006, the Russian oppositionThe Other Russia
The Other Russia , sometimes cited as Another Russia, is an umbrella coalition that gathered opponents of former President of Russia Vladimir Putin...
leader Garry Kasparov
Garry Kasparov
Garry Kimovich Kasparov is a Russian chess grandmaster, a former World Chess Champion, writer, political activist, and one of the greatest chess players of all time....
's top aide Marina Litvinovich, who runs the website
Website
A website, also written as Web site, web site, or simply site, is a collection of related web pages containing images, videos or other digital assets. A website is hosted on at least one web server, accessible via a network such as the Internet or a private local area network through an Internet...
Pravda Beslana ("Truth about Beslan"), was savagely beaten by unidentified attackers on a Moscow street and told to "be careful". Nothing was stolen in the attack.
In September 2007, Taimuraz Chedzhemov, the lawyer representing the Mothers of Beslan who was seeking to prosecute Russian officials over the massacre, said he has pulled out of the case because of a death threat
Death threat
A death threat is a threat of death, often made anonymously, by one person or a group of people to kill another person or groups of people. These threats are usually designed to intimidate victims in order to manipulate their behavior, thus a death threat is a form of coercion...
to his family.
Russia's Patriarch Alexius II
Patriarch Alexius II
Patriarch Alexy II was the 15th Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, the primate of the Russian Orthodox Church....
's plans to build an Orthodox temple as part of the Beslan monument have caused a serious conflict between the Orthodox Church and the leadership of the Russian Muslims in 2007. Beslan victims organizations also spoke against the project and many in Beslan want the ruins of the school to be preserved, opposing the government plan of its demolition to begin with.
International response
The attack at Beslan was met with international abhorrence and universal condemnation, while countries and charities around the world donated to funds set up to assist the families and children that were involved in the Beslan crisis.On September 1, 2005, the United Nations Children's Fund
United Nations Children's Fund
United Nations Children's Fund was created by the United Nations General Assembly on December 11, 1946, to provide emergency food and healthcare to children in countries that had been devastated by World War II...
(UNICEF) marked the first anniversary of the Beslan school tragedy by calling on all adults to shield children from war and conflict.
Maria Sharapova
Maria Sharapova
Maria Yuryevna Sharapova ,. is a Russian professional tennis player and a former world no. 1. A US resident since 1994, Sharapova has won 24 WTA singles titles, including three Grand Slam singles titles at the 2004 Wimbledon, 2006 US Open and 2008 Australian Open...
along with many other female Russian tennis players wore black ribbons during the US Open 2004
Tennis
Tennis is a sport usually played between two players or between two teams of two players each . Each player uses a racket that is strung to strike a hollow rubber ball covered with felt over a net into the opponent's court. Tennis is an Olympic sport and is played at all levels of society at all...
in tribute to the tragedy.
Media portrayal
Films- Children of Beslan (2005), a HBO Documentary Films and BBCBBCThe British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
co-production, produced and directed by Ewa Ewart and Leslie WoodheadLeslie WoodheadLeslie Woodhead is an award-winning British documentary filmmaker.For his National Service he served in Fife at the Joint Services School for Linguists where he was taught Russian. and posted to West Berlin to monitor the communications of Soviet pilots flying in and out of East Germany...
and nominated in three different categories under the 2006 Emmy AwardEmmy AwardAn Emmy Award, often referred to simply as the Emmy, is a television production award, similar in nature to the Peabody Awards but more focused on entertainment, and is considered the television equivalent to the Academy Awards and the Grammy Awards .A majority of Emmys are presented in various...
festival and awarded the Royal Television SocietyRoyal Television SocietyThe Royal Television Society is a British-based educational charity for the discussion, and analysis of television in all its forms, past, present and future. It is the oldest television society in the world...
prize in the category Best Single Documentary - The Beslan Siege (2005), a TV-documentary by October FilmsOctober FilmsOctober Films was an American independent film production company and distributor founded in 1991 by Bingham Ray and Jeff Lipsky as a means of distributing the 1990 film Life Is Sweet...
, directored by Richard Alwyn and produced by Liana Pomeranzev, won the Prix Italia Documentary AwardPrix ItaliaThe Prix Italia is an international Italian television, radio-broadcasting and Website award. It was established in 1948 by RAI - Radiotelevisione Italiana in Capri...
for 2006 - Return to Beslan (Terug naar Beslan) (2005). A DutchNetherlandsThe Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
documentary produced by Netherlands Public Broadcasting. Won an Emmy AwardEmmy AwardAn Emmy Award, often referred to simply as the Emmy, is a television production award, similar in nature to the Peabody Awards but more focused on entertainment, and is considered the television equivalent to the Academy Awards and the Grammy Awards .A majority of Emmys are presented in various...
in 2005 for the best entry in the category "Best Continuing News Coverage". - Three Days in September (2006), directed by Joe HaldermanJoe HaldermanRobert Joel "Joe" Halderman is an American television news writer, director, producer, and convicted felon.-Career:Halderman's journalistic career began in the early 1980s, when he was a producer on the CBS Morning Show with Diane Sawyer and Bill Kurtis...
and narrated by Julia RobertsJulia RobertsJulia Fiona Roberts is an American actress. She became a Hollywood star after headlining the romantic comedy Pretty Woman , which grossed $464 million worldwide... - Beslan (in development), a feature film to be produced by Brian GrazerBrian GrazerBrian Thomas Grazer is an Academy Award-winning American film and television producer who co-founded Imagine Entertainment in 1986 with Ron Howard. Together they have produced many acclaimed films, including Apollo 13 and A Beautiful Mind .- Career :Brian Grazer began his career as a producer...
of Imagine EntertainmentImagine EntertainmentImagine Entertainment is a film and television production company founded in 1986 by director Ron Howard and producer Brian Grazer.Its productions include the television series 24 and Arrested Development and the films Apollo 13 , A Beautiful Mind and The Da Vinci Code .-Organization:Karen...
.
Music
- "Living Shields" by After ForeverAfter ForeverAfter Forever was a Dutch symphonic metal band with strong progressive metal influences. The band relied on the use of both soprano vocals and death grunts. In February 2009, it was announced that After Forever had disbanded.-Biography:...
Books
- House of Meetings, by Martin AmisMartin AmisMartin Louis Amis is a British novelist, the author of many novels including Money and London Fields . He is currently Professor of Creative Writing at the Centre for New Writing at the University of Manchester, but will step down at the end of the 2010/11 academic year...
, references this massacre several times, in part to show how deeply skeptical Russian citizens were of government-disseminated information. - Beslan: The Tragedy of School Number 1 by Timothy Phillips (ISBN 1862079277)
See also
- Budyonnovsk hospital hostage crisisBudyonnovsk hospital hostage crisisThe Budyonnovsk hospital hostage crisis took place from 14 June to 19 June 1995, when a group of 80 to 200 Chechen terrorists led by Shamil Basayev attacked the southern Russian city of Budyonnovsk , some north of the border with the Russian republic of Chechnya...
- Kizlyar-Pervomayskoye hostage crisisKizlyar-Pervomayskoye hostage crisisRebel fighters led by Raduyev then entered the town itself, where they took 2,000 to 3,400hostages and held them at a local hospital, a nearby high-rise building and a bridge...
- List of hostage crises
- Moscow theater hostage crisisMoscow theater hostage crisisThe Moscow theater hostage crisis, also known as the 2002 Nord-Ost siege, was the seizure of the crowded Dubrovka Theater on 23 October 2002 by some 40 to 50 armed Chechens who claimed allegiance to the Islamist militant separatist movement in Chechnya. They took 850 hostages and demanded the...
- Mothers of BeslanMothers of BeslanMothers of Beslan or Beslan Mothers' Committee is a support and advocacy group of parents whose children were among the more than 365 victims of the 2004 Beslan school hostage crisis in North Ossetia-Alania. The group is led by chairwoman Susanna Dudiyeva and has nearly 200 members...
- School shooting
- Voice of BeslanVoice of BeslanVoice of Beslan is a grassroots non-governmental organization created in the aftermath of the 2004 North Ossetian Beslan school hostage crisis, as a splinter group of more radical members of the Mothers of Beslan support and advocacy group of parents of children who were among the victims.The...
- Waco siegeWaco SiegeThe Waco siege began on February 28, 1993, and ended violently 50 days later on April 19. The siege began when the United States Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms attempted to execute a search warrant at the Branch Davidian ranch at Mount Carmel, a property located east-northeast of Waco,...
- List of massacres in Russia
Further reading
- Beslan: Shattered Innocence by Lynn Milburn Lansford
- Beslan: The Tragedy of School Number 1 by Timothy Phillips (ISBN 1862079277)
- Terror at Beslan: A Russian Tragedy with Lessons for America's Schools by John Giduck (ISBN 0-9767753-0-1) (preview available)
- The 2002 Dubrovka and 2004 Beslan Hostage Crises: A Critique of Russian Counter-Terrorism by John B. Dunlop (ISBN 3-89821-608-X)
- The Beslan School Siege and Separatist Terrorism by Michael V. Uschan (preview available)
External links
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
.
Esquire (magazine)
Esquire is a men's magazine, published in the U.S. by the Hearst Corporation. Founded in 1932, it flourished during the Great Depression under the guidance of founder and editor Arnold Gingrich.-History:...
, June 2006, Volume 145, Issue 6. Last accessed November 16, 2009.
BBC News
BBC News is the department of the British Broadcasting Corporation responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs. The department is the world's largest broadcast news organisation and generates about 120 hours of radio and television output each day, as well as online...
, September 1, 2004
Kim Murphy
Kim Murphy is an American actress known for her roles in such movies as Houseguest and Burning Annie and her roles in the television series Level 9 and 24.-Biography:...
, Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
, August 27, 2005.
Photos and videos
- BBC Footage of the Beslan School Massacre
- In pictures. The Beslan School Siege, The GuardianThe GuardianThe Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
, September 2004. - Russian TV broadcasts siege video, BBC News, September 7, 2004
- New Video Of Beslan School Terror, CBSCBSCBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...
, January 21, 2005 - Photo report by the German journalist Christian Kautz, visiting Beslan school at 2005
- Beslan. To remember school siege victims, BBC News
- Missing hostages' photos", Novye Izvestia. Machine-translated by www.online-translator.com.
- Pictures of children, teachers and parents who were killed during the event at the Voice of Beslan website.