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Beslan: Special Forces fingered
18/05/2005 13:11 - (SA)
Vladikavkaz - As the sole trial of an alleged hostage-taker captured in the Beslan school siege opened here on Tuesday, several Beslan residents insisted many hostages were in fact killed by the Russian special forces who were supposed to free them.
They say the special forces used flame-throwers and rocket launchers against the school as hostages were still inside, contrary to the official version.
And they say they can prove it.
Officially, many of the 330 people, more than half of them children, who died in the attack last September were killed by powerful explosives the hostage-takers detonated inside the school.
Use of flame-throwers
But the editor of a local newspaper, Murad Kabuyev, and many Beslan residents argue that their own inquiry into the circumstances of the assault carried out by Russian forces on September 3 2004 shows very different results.
"We know flame-throwers were used before the evacuation" of the school, says Kabuyev, a respected journalist who received an award from the Russian Journalists Union for his work on the Beslan tragedy.
He says he can display two exhibits to prove this - a flame-thrower and a rocket launcher residents found near the school.
"We know the special forces set them up on the roof of a house facing the school as early as September 2. Witnesses saw them," Kabuyev says.
Kabuyev and several residents have founded an association called the Initiative Group for the Submission of Evidence to the Forces of Law and Order. He says that "so far, it has not been established that two bombs went off inside the (school) gymnasium" where the hostage-takers kept their captives.
In April, the Group convinced the prosecutor's office to register the flame-thrower and the rocket launcher as official exhibits.
Kabuyev sees this as a first victory and insists the Group's efforts have brought about a change in the official version, which had initially denied the special forces had ever used the flame-thrower.
The group has gathered testimonies, including that of Lyudmila Dzgoyeva, who was a hostage with her two daughters, one of whom was killed.
"The explosives hung up (in the school's gymnasium by the hostage-takers) did not go off," says Dzgoyeva, 33, who, like Kabuyev, is attending the trial in Vladikavkaz.
"Just before the explosion, I saw a light outside through one of the gymnasium's windows," which could have come from a flame thrower or a grenade launcher, she says.
As he attends the trial, Kabuyev notes that the lawyers of the victims' families often state that the bodies of many hostages killed were burnt.
"How could there have been so many hostages burnt if flame-throwers were not used before the evacuation?" he asks.
The prosecutor's office has promised that a global trial focusing on all the circumstances of the hostage-taking will eventually be held, but later.
- AFP
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