rom: MSN NicknameEagle_wng (Original Message) Sent: 9/2/2005 4:24 AM
The Scotsman
Fri 2 Sep 2005
A grandmother weeps at the grave of one of the children who died in the siege at the Beslan school a year ago.
Picture: Yuri Kadobnov/ AFP/ Getty Images
Beslan parents seek asylum in a country 'that values human life'
CHRIS STEPHEN IN
MOSCOW
VLADIMIR Putin received a slap in the face from the residents of Beslan yesterday as they marked the anniversary of the school massacre by demanding asylum abroad.
Hundreds of Beslan's people, claiming that the government mishandled the siege, begged foreign nations to save them from a country "where a human life means nothing".
The protest comes as a delegation of Beslan parents was due to make their complaints to the Russian president in person at the Kremlin today.
In a letter, the people of the small south Russian town said: "We, the parents and relatives of the victims of the terrorist act of 3 September at School No 1 in Beslan, have lost all hope for a just investigation of the reasons and the guilty parties in our tragedy.
"We do not wish to live anymore in this country, where a human life means nothing."
The letter follows mounting anger over what residents say is a cover-up over government mistakes in the handling of the siege, in which 330 people, including 186 children, died.
The allegations centre on a photograph taken shortly after the siege, showing three discarded bazooka-style weapons on a rooftop overlooking the burnt-out school. The weapon, a Shmel, fires a missile that ignites into a fireball. Residents suspect that these weapons, rather than terrorist bombs, were responsible for fire racing along the school gym's wooden roof, which collapsed on top of hundreds of hostages.
"We have waited patiently almost a year for them to tell us the truth," said the letter. "However, time and the actions of authorities have shown us that they will never tell us the truth."
Last year, government investigators said the army did not deploy the Shmel.
This conclusion flew in the face of television footage at the time showing soldiers armed with bazookas entering the school. After residents produced the three discarded bazooka tubes, prosecutors admitted this summer that such weapons were deployed.
But last month, Alexander Torshin, the head of the government's investigation commission, said the bazookas were not used on the roof of the gym. The relatives are not convinced and want to know why such weapons were deployed in the first place. "How can you use such weapons if there are children in the school?" said Zalina Guburov, a Mothers' Committee member.
Questions over the bazookas are not the only ones residents want answered. Others include how the terrorists got to the school in the first place. There were at least 30, they were heavily armed and they came by car to Beslan, in North Ossetia, from neighbouring Ingushetia. Yet all roads between the two have been guarded since the two provinces fought each other in 1992.
The Beslan mothers say that corrupt officials left one road open to allow smuggled petrol to cross the region.
Another question is why nobody took charge of the security forces once the siege began. Local officials, it seemed, simply did not want the responsibility, and neither did the Kremlin. The result was that there was little co-ordination between police, army, special forces and troops. There were not enough ambulances and badly injured children were instead crammed into commandeered cars.
More mistrust has come from the unexplained decision to clear the school of rubble the day after the fire, before forensic investigators had a chance to examine the scene.
Several truckloads of rubble were found, along with human skin, hair and clothing, dumped in a hole outside Beslan in February.
Yesterday, police and troops were out in force to reassure residents for the start of the new school year, but locals say government incompetence leaves them worried rebels may stage more attacks.
http://news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=1878162005
