Word: beslan
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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This Friday, September 1, marks the second anniversary of Russia's "9/11" - the atrocious seizure of more than 1,128 hostages in a Beslan school, which left more than 330 - most of them children - dead in an ensuing slaughter. And as hard as that milestone will be to endure, newly released claims about Russia's possible responsibility for and role in the massacre will make it much more painful to bear...
...ardent nationalist and former rector of the St. Petersburg-based Baltic Mechanical Engineering University ( who was personally placed under sanctions by the U.S. government back in 1999 for letting Iranian students in on sensitive military-related research), Savelyev is an expert on explosions who happened to be present in Beslan during the tragedy. Later, he became a member of the official parliamentary investigative commission on Beslan, which has yet to present its report...
...these conclusions are, this is not the first time these and similar accusations have been made against Putin's government, which has vehemently denied any suggestion that anything but the official version was what really occurred. Almost from the time the tragedy took place, advocates for the victims of Beslan have argued that the Kremlin's first priority was wiping out the terrorists regardless of collateral damage, and that it deliberately frustrated the talks and started the assault...
...Indeed, just several days after the Beslan tragedy, Akhmed Zakayev, then the Chechens' chief rebel envoy in London, told TIME in a phone interview that on September 2, then rebel leader Aslan Maskhadov (killed by the Russian forces in March, 200 5) gave him orders to do everything possible to save the children." Zakayev said they both "were horrified at this atrocity." Though Maskhadov and Zakayev were not part of the faction that initiated the school operation, they wielded sufficient authority and moral weight to order them to release the hostages in exchange for their safe passage...
...time, Zakayev revealed that he had been in communication with then President of North Ossetia Alexander Dzasokhov, head of the Beslan crisis task force. They nearly worked out the details for Maskhadov and Zakayev to come to Beslan and help win the release of the hostages. In fact, just shortly before the assault started, Dzasokhov told the relatives of the hostages that there would be no assault, and that the crisis would be resolved without the use of force. Such an outcome, however, would have legitimized Maskhadov and won him lots of goodwill in both Russia and abroad, something Putin...