Thu, May 19, 2005 page6

• Amid controversy, lone hostage taker goes on trial

  CALLOUS As the trial begins, Beslan residents insisted that it was special forces troops that were responsible for most of the casualties in last year's school siege

  • AFP
  • • 
    • 
    • 

  As the sole trial of an alleged hostage-taker captured in the Beslan school siege opened 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.

  

  A woman cries holding a portrait of a relative, a victim of the Beslan school hostage crisis, outside a court house during a trial in Vladikavkaz, Northern Ossetia, Russia, Tuesday.

  PHOTO: AP

  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.

  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 Sept 3 last year 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 Sept. 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.

  The Initiative Group demands a second inquiry into the way the special forces stormed the Beslan school. And Kabuyev 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.

  "We handed the exhibits to the prosecutor's office on April 4," Kabuyev says.

  "At first, the prosecutor insisted that they belonged to the terrorists and he would not hear anything about the fact that they had been used by the special forces. But thanks to our efforts, his office now admits this," he says.

  However, Kabuyev's optimism may be a little bit premature.

  While a spokesman for the prosecutor's office did confirm his services had registered the exhibits, he ruled out the possibility that they might have been used against the hostages.

  "The inquiry has established that [the weapons] were used only after the hostages were evacuated" from the school, Sergei Prokapov told reporters.

  "The flame-thrower and the rocket launcher were only used around 6:00pm [on Sept 3], when all hostages had been evacuated," he said. There are no testimonies or facts contradicting this."

  But the Initiative Group says it has gathered precisely such 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 burned.
• Most Popular

  • 1

    UK navy unveils plans near Taiwan

  • 2

    31 charged over KMT-led recall campaign forged petitions

  • 3

    Chikungunya fever cases rise to 13, CDC says

  • 4

    Merida confident about outlook for bicycle market

  • 5

    US involvement in Iran could affect Taiwan: expert