The official story via Wikipedia, is this:
The Beslan school siege (also referred to as the Beslan school hostage crisis or Beslan massacre) started on 1 September 2004, lasted three days, involved the capture of over 1,100 people as hostages (including 777 children), and ended with the death of at least 385 people. The crisis began when a group of armed Islamic Groups, mostly Ingush and Chechen, occupied School Number One (SNO) in the town of Beslan, North Ossetia (an autonomous republic in the North Caucasus region of the Russian Federation) on 1 September 2004. The hostage-takers were the Riyadus-Salikhin Battalion, sent by the Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev, who demanded recognition of the independence of Chechnya, and Russian withdrawal from Chechnya. On the third day of the standoff, Russian security forces stormed the building with the use of tanks, incendiary rockets and other heavy weapons. At least 330 hostages were killed, including 186 children, with a significant number of people injured and reported missing.
The event led to security and political repercussions in Russia; most notably, it contributed to a series of federal government reforms consolidating power in the Kremlin and strengthening of the powers of the President of Russia. As of 2016, aspects of the crisis in relation to the militants continue to be contentious: questions remain regarding how many terrorists were involved, the nature of their preparations and whether a section of the group had escaped. Questions about the Russian government’s management of the crisis have also persisted, including allegations of disinformation and censorship in news media, whether the journalists who were present at Beslan were allowed to freely report on the crisis, the nature and content of negotiations with the terrorists, allocation of responsibility for the eventual outcome, and perceptions that excessive force was used.
However, independent investigations, including one conducted by the State Duma parliamentary Yuri Savelyev, concluded that the federal troops initiated the storming of the school and used heavy weaponry that set off explosions inside a school gym. The Russian government still denies responsibility for the botched rescue operation.
A video was released 3 years after the massacre that seemed to confirm Russian security forces were responsible for the first explosions during the Beslan hostage crisis and that the raid was deliberately botched and then covered up. Was it botched to hand Vladimir Putin a propaganda coup in the war against Chechnya?
A video that remained secret for nearly three years after the horrific Beslan hostage crisis has cast new doubt on official conclusions about what led to the deaths of 334 people, more than half of them children, during one of Russia’s worst terrorist attacks, reports the Associated Press.
The footage is far from definitive, but appears to lend credence to the theory that security forces bear at least some of the blame for the high death toll.
The footage depicts explosions taking place outside of the school buildings and contradicts the official explanation that militants were responsible for the initial blasts, while validating survivor’s accounts of what took place. The video was filmed by an onlooker and forms part of the dearth of available footage of the incident, since the FSB refuses to turn its footage over to investigators and has sought to close the book on the case at every turn. Many aspects of the Beslan siege provide stunning contradictions to the official story and clearly indicate that Russian forces had a hand in staging if not at least provocateuring the massacre.
The Parliamentary Committee investigation uncovered the fact that high-ranking Russian military officers were involved in the plot and acted as accomplices to the terrorists. These individuals were ranked “higher than a major and a colonel,” according to the Committee. A former policeman was also exposed as being involved in the plot. Other police involvement was later confirmed.
The Parliamentary Commission also found evidence that a “foreign intelligence agency” was involved in coordinating the massacre. Journalists who reported on the Beslan siege and uncovered evidence of inside involvement were later drugged and detained by Russian authorities as the cover-up swung into high gear. During the siege, Russian authorities refused to reveal what the terrorists’ demands were, blocking all phone communications and claiming a tape containing the terrorists’ demands was blank.
The alleged Chechen terrorists did not even speak Chechen and received orders from abroad, according to reports.
Some hostages claim an explosive detonated after being hit by a missile launched from the roof of a nearby building by a member of Russian special forces. The official version maintains that the bombs were set off by terrorists either deliberately or accidentally. More than half of the hostage fatalities were caused by the explosions and ensuing fires.
Another unanswered question is whether some of the terrorists were able to escape. According to the official version of events, there were 32 of them, and all but one were killed. The only one captured, Nur-Pashi Kulayev, was sentenced to life imprisonment, but both the hostages and the organizer of the attack, then-leader of the Chechen rebel movement Shamil Basayev, claimed that some of the attackers had escaped.
The Beslan massacre occurred amidst a wave of terror attacks in Russia and shortly after the crashes of two Tupolev passenger airliners, which were blamed on Chechen terrorists by authorities. However, citing the fact that the aircraft debris was scattered over large areas, the independent Russian media accused Vladimir Putin of ordering the planes shot down in a crude false flag ploy to secure an election victory for the pro-Kremlin Chechen President Alu Alkhanov two days later.
Chechen separatist leader Aslan Maskhadov denied any involvement in the plane crashes or the school siege, citing “a third force that brought Russian President Vladimir Putin to power” as being responsible for the carnage.
The notorious Russian FSB has a documented history of staging false flag events in order to accomplish political agendas.
Vladimir Putin came to power as a result of an FSB orchestrated reign of terror in the autumn of 1999 which involved blowing up apartment blocks all over Russia and blaming the attacks on Chechen separatists, thus playing on Russian fears of the fierce Muslim Chechens both to start a new war in Chechnya and to win Putin the presidential elections.
FSB agents were caught planting Hexogen explosives underneath an apartment block in Ryazan. Records indicate that the first call the “terrorists” made after planting the bomb was to FSB headquarters and the culprits were allowed to flee the country by authorities.
The FSB admitted planting the sacks of explosives, but later claimed they contained sugar and were used as part of a drill to test security procedures. Authorities had first stated that a terrorist attack had been averted and that the sacks did contain Hexogen, until FSB involvement was discovered at which point the story was changed.
Alexei Kartofelnikov, the first eyewitness to see the explosives and alert the police, went on the record to state that the substance was clearly not sugar, describing the material as looking more like rice and yellow in color – a clear match for the description of Hexogen. The FSB had planted real explosives and were caught in the act of staging a false flag terror attack, forcing them to concoct an elaborate cover story while blocking any real investigation and silencing whistleblowers.
The siege took place on the first day of school, a day known as the ‘Day of Knowledge’ and a very important day for the very educated Russian people.
On the 12th anniversary of the Beslan tragedy, five members of the Voice of Beslan, all of whom lost family members during the storming of the school by Russian forces, came to the site of the school wearing t-shirts “Putin is the butcher of Beslan” and demanding a real investigation. Police arrested the activists, injuring some of them. The women were detained, one of them beaten with such force, that she became sick. Late that night all of them were sentenced to public works and fined for about $300.
Two Moscow journalists – Yelena Kostyuchenko from Novaya Gazeta and Diana Khachatryan from Takie Dela – were also detained to be released soon. Two hours later they were attacked by the men in T-shirts with “Antiterror” inscriptions, who poured brilliant green on Kostyuchenko.
The detained made it home safely, but the story took a new turn afterwards.
Caucasian Knot reports, that on September 14 three cars with 15 uniformed policemen and men in civil clothes drove to Ella Kesayeva`s house. They failed to present themselves or state the aim of the visit, but insisted on seeing Kesaeva. One of them was conducting video filming. A relative of Kesayeva told them she was not at home and closed the door. The Voice of Beslan leader Ella Kesayeva intends to file a complaint with the North Ossetia Interior Ministry top administration.
In the wake of the tragedy, Putin altered Russia’s political system, replacing direct elections of regional governors with presidential appointments approved by local legislature. In 2012 President Dmitry Medvedev reinstated direct elections, albeit in a more curtailed mode, with the candidates having to collect signatures from municipal deputies. Putin specifically cited the Beslan tragedy in justifying his decision on the gubernatorial elections, saying that in the face of a terrorist threat, the government must enforce national unity.
“[Putin] personally handed out awards and promoted all the people who killed our children,” says Kesayeva. She says the group has been hounded by officials trying to disrupt its work, with documents confiscated and Federal Security Service (FSB) agents sitting in on its meetings. A campaign in state-controlled media suggested her organization was being manipulated by unnamed political forces trying to destabilize Russia.
“In the eyes of parents and relatives, it is the state that acts like a terrorist. For us it does not matter who killed the terrorists. What we saw were tanks shelling the whole school with our children inside,” Kesayeva said in a phone interview from Beslan.
“This is an enormous crime. The terrorists were the enemies, but why did the government do nothing to save the children? Why did Putin give the order to shoot at the school? He was the only one who could have done that,” she said.
To help you make up your own minds about whether or not these women have a moral right to denounce Putin, we’ll tell you their respective stories:
ELLA KESAYEVA (head of Voice of Beslan). Lost two nephews and her son-in-law during the siege, but her daughter Zarina survived. Sentenced to 20 hours of compulsory community service in September 2016.
The arrest left her with extensive bruising on her arms. Two men in military fatigues bundled her into a waiting vehicle, she recalls, and many others – “including the district police chief” – pushed her towards it. “We left the school at around noon, and as soon as we’d reached the nearest building, we were accosted by what must’ve been a good hundred police officers, OMON personnel, people in civilian clothing. They joined hands and formed several circles around us. I was the first to be grabbed…”
Though not among the hostages in September 2004, Ella Kesayeva endured what was arguably no less harrowing an ordeal: “Around one o’clock [on 03.09.2004], there was a tank outside the Dzagoevs’ house, with a few soldiers – around five of them – behind it. And then the tank opened fire. The windows of the school building just started exploding. I began to scream: ‘Jesus God, they’ve got tanks firing on children!’ But it just kept on firing.”
Yuri Savelyev, a leading weapons and explosives expert who has authored an independent report on the Beslan siege, maintains that over fifty Beslan residents saw three tanks firing on the school – in broad daylight: “An unpalatable fact alluded to by many witnesses and hostages is that shots were fired on the façade of the canteen even though hostages – women and children – had been forced to stand on the window sills, where they were waving various pieces of fabric.”
Let us remind our readers of the official version of events, which holds that tanks fired on the school only on the evening of September 3, by which time the last of the terrorists were being flushed out of the basement and the building was empty of hostages.
ZHANNA TSIRIKHOVA. Held hostage together with her two daughters, one of whom, eight-year-old Elizaveta, was killed. Fined 20,000 roubles in September 2016.
Zhanna, too, emphasises the brutality with which the women were apprehended: “When we refused [to write explanatory statements or go to the police station], they grabbed us […] and bundled us roughly into waiting vehicles. One woman was punched, we’ve bruises on our arms.”
Zhanna goes on to describe the terror of 2004: “On the third day [of the siege], around lunchtime, I heard this whistling and hissing, and then an explosion went off … the children had been on my lap, but suddenly they were gone. I found my elder daughter. Her sister, Liza, was lying nearby with her head smashed in…”
As Yury Savelyev takes care to stress, the Geneva Convention prohibits the use of indiscriminate weapons – i.e., weapons that leave no chance of survival. But precisely such weapons were deployed at Beslan by FSB Special Operations Centre personnel, and namely rocket-propelled flamethrowers, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, and assault grenades.
The official version, meanwhile, holds that no indiscriminate weapons were deployed while there were still hostages in the school building. The authorities deny that the operation to free the hostages was launched after special forces operatives used a grenade launcher they’d set up on the roof of a neighbouring house to fire on the sports hall.
SVETLANA MARGIEVA. Held hostage together with her daughter, twelve-year-old Elvira, who was killed. Sentenced to twenty hours of community service in September 2016.
Svetlana, the oldest of the women, experienced the most brutal treatment: “I was hit on the head and began to vomit. They were dragging us into their vehicles, we didn’t want to go. We were driven to the police station against our will and detained there for five hours before being taken to the courthouse. They didn’t even give us any water. We’d been taken hostage by law enforcement. The trial went on until four in the morning.”
During the siege, Svetlana suffered wounds to the leg and abdomen, but this is by no means what will remain forever etched in her memory: “When I came to after the explosions […], I saw that there was someone lying in my arms. I recognised her by her clothes. It was my daughter. Then I looked at her face. Her eyes were open, there was blood coming from her throat, and her jaw was slack. She’d died in my arms.”
The authorities insist on the following version of events: an improvised explosive device made by terrorists exploded in the sports hall, prompting the hostages to flee, whereupon the extremists opened fire – thereby leaving special forces operatives with no choice but to storm the school. According to the unofficial version, however, the catalyst for the premature operation was the potential imminent arrival in Beslan of Chechen leader Aslan Maskhadov: if the latter were to secure the hostages’ release following negotiations with the terrorists, Putin would suffer an inadmissible political defeat …
EMMA BETROZOVA. Lost her husband and two sons – Alan, 16, and Aslan, 14 – during the siege. Sentenced in September 2016 to a 20,000-rouble fine.
Emma’s husband demanded that the terrorists give the children some water. He wasn’t spared: “My husband Ruslan was killed […] before the eyes of our sons, and they didn’t allow his body to be removed from the sports hall for twenty-four hours afterward. My poor boys survived their dad by just a single day. I recognised my eldest by the sock on his foot.”
And although the authorities lay the blame for the death of the hostages solely at the door of the terrorists, Emma Betrozova – along with many others in Beslan – begs to differ: “I believe the blame lies with the government, with the authorities: they’re to blame because they failed to save our children, and because they created the conditions that made the terrorist act possible in the first place.”
EMILIA BZAROVA.Lost her nine-year-old son, Aslan, during the siege; the cause of his death was impossible to determine due to the charring of his body. Sentenced in September 2016 to twenty hours of community service.
Emilia Bzarova no longer believes that the Russian authorities are possessed of even the slightest degree of integrity or conscientiousness; over the years, she’s seen far too many things that prove otherwise: “I just can’t get my head round the vandalism that followed in the wake of our tragedy at School No. 1. They destroyed everything. They destroyed the building fired on by the tank, eradicated all traces of the crime […], and, using God to their advantage, went on to set up a shrine.”
Although the authorities have done their utmost to suppress any information about the storming of the southern wing of the school, where over a hundred hostages were killed, Yuri Savelyev not only managed to establish the minutiae of what happened, but also to ascertain how incriminating evidence was subsequently destroyed: “Late in the evening [of 03.09.2004], classrooms and a workshop located in the school’s southern wing [which had survived the storming operation. – Ed.] were destroyed by flamethrowers and high-explosive tank shells […] before being flooded with water from hydrants. Mountains of debris were taken to landfill throughout the night and the following morning – and all in the presence of Ministry of Emergency Situations [Sergei] Shoigu, who had arrived on the scene. Beslan residents would subsequently uncover human fragments at the landfill site, together with the hostages’ personal effects.”
It must also be noted that the investigation of the school as a crime scene lasted a mere eleven hours. In the immediate aftermath of the siege, the authorities were intent on demolishing the entire school complex, but were prevented from doing so by the dead children’s mothers, who threatened to lie under the bulldozers.
ZEMFIRA TSIRIKHOVA, too, was sentenced to twenty hours of community service. And although Zemfira, who lost her younger son during the siege, wasn’t involved in the rally, the court nonetheless found sufficient grounds for sentencing – she’d committed the grievous offences of “being in a group of women” and “allowing herself to make remarks.”
Without the sieges of Nord-Ost and Beslan, one could argue that there would have been no Crimea and no Donbas. The current regime has ventured ever further down the road of unbridled licence, ridding itself of all constraints of law and morality. When it finally departs the scene, official investigations will need to be launched into every phase of “Putin’s Progress,” from Nord-Ost to Eastern Ukraine. For as long as society remains ignorant of the truth behind these events, we shall never succeed in making the breakthrough to a new Russia.
What Do These Mothers who Represent the ‘Voice of Beslan’ Want?
“We want to attract attention to what happened in Beslan anew”, Svetlana Margieva, a September 1 action participant, told Meduza. In September 2004 she and her daughter were among the hostages in the gym.
“Putin has consolidated his power on our children`s blood. My daughter has kept asking “Will Putin help us, Mom?” until the moment she died on my hands. Other kids have been saying the same. We hoped for Putin, and he has done nothing to save the children”.
“We know, that the president and the commander-in-chief is guilty. He was not interrogated despite our complaints. He is above law”, Ella Kesaeva adds.
The women from the organization have no doubt, that the Russian special services have not only failed to prevent the September 1, 2004 terrorist attack, but are also guilty of killing children.
Their conclusions are based on the witnesses testimonies and some independent investigations data. After years of official investigations it is still not completed and seems to move nowhere.
Voice of Beslan is not the only organization, representing the terrorists victims, not even the most numerous one. Its relations with Mothers of Beslan are tense. Voice of Beslan activists hold Vladimir Putin personally and the top Russian administration responsible for killing the children in 2004. Mothers of Beslan believe the authorities are to blame for failing to prevent the attack.
“For 12 years (in Sept 2012) we have been demanding the fair investigation. Our methods are legal – we meet with the authorities, the MPs. We are moving step by step. We are waiting for the president and the MPs to realize, that the lessons should be drawn from the past mistakes”, Susanna Dudieva, the Mothers of Beslan chairperson, told Meduza.
Mothers of Beslan denounced Voice of Beslan for the protest action and suspect the Kesaeva organization of political motives.
“This is the place for mourning, it is mean to shout where people moan and suffer, – Dudieva told Meduza. – Any opinion can be expressed outside, not ruining the aura of the place”.
“…The Russian and foreign opposition organizations benefit from such methods. In Moscow, in America, or in Europe they enjoyed it, they said “It will serve him right!”, Dudieva said.
The action participants have strongly denied any political motives, including any connection with the upcoming parliamentary elections. The position of the organization, chaired by Dudieva, they explain by the fact, that Mothers of Beslan have what to lose, as they all are employed by the authorities (Meduza). Women from Voice of Beslan believe, that many among local residents sympathize with them, but are not ready to speak openly. “On September 1 many wanted to come to our defense, but were pushed aside. But we heard people crying: “Let them go! Are you cops or terrorists?”
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