Word: beslan
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...Savelyev's findings confirm, Ella Kesayeva, Chair of the Voice of Beslan Public Committee, told TIME in a phone interview Wednesday morning, "that the authorities are as guilty in murdering our children as the terrorists," because the Kremlin-ordered assault also abruptly killed the negotiating process that could realistically get the hostages released. "Putin had our children butchered, and used the massacre to build his one-person rule of this country...
...fact, only ten days after the Beslan disaster, Putin made a statement that was to reshape this country drastically. Russia was at war with terrorists, Putin said, invoking "hidden enemies" and the threat to this country's integrity. He pledged to mobilize the nation to fight back in "the total and cruel and full-scale war," and to launch an efficient crisis-management system, "which will include principally new approaches to law enforcement agencies...
...Within two years, Putin had fully accomplished his program, outlined in the wake of the Beslan tragedy: he has a rubber-stamp Parliament. He has intimidated the mass media. He has firmly taken over Russia's main riches of oil and gas. He subdued the regions and enlarged the powers of the FSB. In spite of that, reports of terror bombings and shootings have grown into a routine daily occurrence...
...Savelyev is a member of our commission, and we studied his view," Alexander Torshin, Deputy Speaker of the Federation Council (the upper house of Russia's Parliament) and Chair of the Beslan Inquiry Commission, told the Interfax wire agency. "But we turned it down, as the facts he cites were not persuasive...
...Kesayeva entertained no hope that the authorities would accept Savelyev's findings. "They'll besmirch him, like they have been besmirching all of us for not dying along with our children," she says. Still, she believes that one day, "the Russian authorities, responsible for Beslan, will have to answer for that...