The Russian parliamentary commission investigating the Beslan school siege has passed over to law enforcement agencies evidence on two more officials suspected of helping the militants seize the school in early September 2004, the commission head was quoted as saying by Interfax on Thursday.
“Two accomplices have already been arrested, three have had arrest warrants issued for them and are now being looked for, and there are two more on whom we have handed over material,” Alexander Torshin, chairman of the commission and a deputy speaker of the Federation Council, the upper house of the Russian parliament, told reporters.
“A terrorist act on such a scale would have been impossible to commit without accomplices.”
The news is likely to increase tensions further in North Ossetia where the tragedy occurred. Last week relatives of the victims blocked Beslan’s main highway for three days to press their demands to remove the republic’s president Alexander Dzasokhov from office and they threatened to take further “illegal” action if he does not step down. The relatives accuse Dzasokhov of failing to protect their children.
It is unclear how the terrorists managed to smuggle so many weapons into the school, as well as pass a number of official checkpoints. It is known that several policemen readily accepted bribes to turn a blind eye.
While the accomplices identified so far have been local civilians, Mr Torshin said the duo being sought both held a military rank “higher than a major and a colonel”.
MOSCOW, Russia (CNN) -- Russian law enforcement officials allegedly helped terrorists to carry out last September's school massacre in Beslan, Russia, that left 344 people dead, according to the head of a special parliamentary commission.
Alexander Torshin, the head of the commission investigating the fatal hostage taking, told Russian media that two accomplices already have been detained, three are being sought and authorities are preparing the legal work to detain two more.
Torshin said the suspects included officials ranking "higher than major."
Another Senator who is a member of the commission, Vladimir Kulakov, added that the people who aided the terrorists are not only in Beslan but "at the federal level" and "these people are still at their jobs."
He did not identify the officials by name. His comments were quoted by Interfax news agency.
The commission has been investigating the Beslan massacre for months. It is expected to release its report this spring.
Analysts say the news is not surprising since, shortly after the hostage-taking was over, Russian officials announced that a local policeman had been arrested for "complicity" in the attack.
It is not clear whether that policeman is one of those described by Alexander Torshin.
The hostage taking began on the morning of September 1, the opening of the school year, as 32 heavily armed terrorists took over School Number One in Beslan, North Ossetia, a region near the war-torn southern Russian republic of Chechnya.
More than 1,200 people, including students, teachers and parents, were held in abysmal conditions in the school's gymnasium for nearly three days. The hostage-taking ended when one of the bombs placed by the terrorists in the gymnasium exploded.
Hostages tried to flee as the roof collapsed and a fire broke out. As Russian security forces opened fire, the terrorists shot many fleeing hostages in the back. The reason for the initial explosion still is not known.
President Vladimir Putin initially rejected calls for a public investigation along the lines of the United States' 9/11 commission but, under public pressure, relented.
At the federal level no less. Wonder where it will lead.
CotK <mew> | HAB | JL | MM | TTC | Cybertron
TAX THE CHURCHES! - Lord Zentei TTC Supreme Grand Prophet
And the LORD said, Let there be Bosons! Yea and let there be Bosoms too!
I'd rather be the great great grandson of a demon ninja than some jackass who grew potatos. -- Covenant
Dead cows don't fart. -- CJvR
...and I like strudel! -- Asuka
I am probably misunderstanding, but did the government secretly allow the terrorists to gain control and massacre people in an attempt to beef up draconian anti terrorism policies?
It sounds like Sci Fi or something. IT can't be that.
Hasn't the russian army been through enough in the past seventy years?
Many thanks! These darned computers always screw me up. I calculated my first death-toll using a hand-cranked adding machine (we actually calculated the average mortality in each city block individually). Ah, those were the days.
-Stuart
"Mix'em up. I'm tired of States' Rights."
-Gen. George Thomas, Union Army of the Cumberland
Boyish-Tigerlilly wrote:I am probably misunderstanding, but did the government secretly allow the terrorists to gain control and massacre people in an attempt to beef up draconian anti terrorism policies?
It sounds like Sci Fi or something. IT can't be that.
Never heard the theory that Putin arranged the explosions of 99 to get elected, have you? Personally, I'm not very surprised about this.
"The rest of the poem plays upon that pun. On the contrary, says Catullus, although my verses are soft (molliculi ac parum pudici in line 8, reversing the play on words), they can arouse even limp old men. Should Furius and Aurelius have any remaining doubts about Catullus' virility, he offers to fuck them anally and orally to prove otherwise." - Catullus 16, Wikipedia
If this is true they deserve the worst possible sentence they can get--if they aren't being framed. Considering what Putin's been up to lately there's no telling how far he'd go to seize all the power he can get.
"A woman spanking her child is not as great a threat to aviation as members of Al Qaeda with box cutters," says one expert.-Understatement of the century.
"You can't fix stupid"-Ron White
Russian officers have been known to sell off some of their weapons to the black market to make some cash on the side in the past, as well as openly dealing with their Chechen rebel opponents in Chechnya proper. Does that mean that the government has a hand in that too? Would Russian law enforcement be permitted to reveal this if this silly conspiracy theory was actually so?
Lord Zentei wrote:At the federal level no less. Wonder where it will lead.
Mother Russia hasn't had a GREAT PURGE of her officer corps in a good while.
"You know what the problem with Hollywood is. They make shit. Unbelievable. Unremarkable. Shit." - Gabriel Shear, Swordfish
"This statement, in its utterly clueless hubristic stupidity, cannot be improved upon. I merely quote it in admiration of its perfection." - Garibaldi in reply to an incredibly stupid post.
The Fifth Illuminatus Primus | Warsie | Skeptical Empiricist | Florida Gator | Sustainability Advocate | LibertarianSocialist |
-- Asuka
