RUSSIA: Five years after Russia's worst terrorist attack claimed 333 lives, Beslan is still haunted by its past

Record ID: 759193

  • Title: RUSSIA: Five years after Russia's worst terrorist attack claimed 333 lives, Beslan is still haunted by its past
  • Date: 1st September 2009
  • Summary: BESLAN, NORTH OSSETIA, RUSSIA (RECENT - AUGUST 2009) (REUTERS) PHOTOGRAPHS OF HOSTAGES THAT DIED IN BESLAN SCHOOL SIEGE ON THE SCHOOL WALL TOYS NEAR DAMAGED SCHOOL WALL PEOPLE INSIDE SCHOOL'S GYM, WHERE HOSTAGES WERE KEPT RIBBON OF RUSSIAN FLAG COLOURS TIED TO BURNT WOODEN PIECE OF SCHOOL'S INTERIOR
  • Embargoed: 16th September 2009 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Topics: Legal System
  • Reuters ID: LVAC0BJUF209HIAVZ0JN66TXMEBT
  • Story Text: Five years after Beslan school siege, it's survivors turn for justice to the European Court of Human Rights, say Beslan lesson haven't been learnt.
    Grief and horror still hangs in the air at Beslan's School No 1 five years after the bloody school siege took lives of 333 people, more than half of them children.
    In the school's sports hall, where many of the victims died in an explosion and fire photographs of the dead children hung in rows on the walls.
    In some places, several photographs carrying the same surname are next to each other -- a sign that a whole family had been wiped out in the bloodshed.
    Children toys placed next to charred walls of the school gym. Every day relatives of hostages or visitors to Beslan come to the school.
    On September 1, 2004 more than 1100 parents and children had arrived at school No. 1, many carrying flowers for their teachers, a tradition on the first day of term.
    But they were greeted by heavily armed gunmen who held them for three days, killing many of the male hostages and withholding drinking water.
    In a bloody climax on Sept. 3, an explosion in the sports hall prompted security forces to storm the school. Hundreds died in the ensuing firefight.
    In 2005 Nurpashi Kulayev, the only terrorist caught alive, was sentenced to life. Some of the terrorists are thought to have escaped. A court case against three local senior police officers accused of negligence ended with an amnesty without them giving evidence in public.
    Not a single Russian state official resigned or was sacked as a result of Russia's worst ever terrorist attack. Instead some senior local security officers were promoted.
    Most families of the dead are angry at the authorities' apparent unwillingness to properly investigate the terrorist attack. Five years on, they are still waiting for the prosecutors' inquiry to reach its conclusion. It has been postponed thirty times. A lengthy parliamentary probe published three years ago was widely dismissed as a whitewash by people in Beslan, because it failed to blame the Russian government in any way.
    Ella Kesayva, head of the local pressure group "Voice of Beslan" thinks that the state is to blame for allowing the attack to happen and for failing to enter into proper negotiations with the terrorists to save more children and that in the five years past since the tragedy the lesson of Beslan hasn't been learnt.
    "Beslan has not become a turning point after which the terrorism got weaker, no, nothing like that. It was relatively calm for a while, and it is on the rise again, unfortunately. And it is happening because lessons [of Beslan] were not learnt, the guilty ones were not punished. the system which led to Beslan tragedy is still in place," says Ellla Kesayva, whose sister lost both sons and husband in the terrorist attack.
    The "Voice of Beslan" helps victims' relatives to gather necessary documents in order to file a case against the Russian government at the European Union's Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.
    "We have prepared and sent more than 200 applications [to the European Court of Human Rights - ECHR], it is a huge number for Strasbourg, and it is what only our organisation [Voice of Beslan] have prepared," said Ella Kesayva, demonstrating one of the application to the ECHR.
    Today the town is typical of others in North Ossetia, a predominantly orthodox and strongly conservative region of Russia's north Caucasus. It is sleepy, provincial and rural.
    Russian authorities built two new schools to re-house the children from School Number One But. The state has spent 18 million dollars on a new high-tech hospital built in a field almost opposite the cemetery. Now almost complete, it promises to be North Ossetia's best hospital but is still not open. Families who lost loved ones during the siege received compensations as well as those who sustained injuries. The state as well as foreign donors funded the treatment in the best Russian clinics or abroad.
    But with years the Russian authorities have ceased to pay attention to Beslan's problem and the amount of assistance to the victims has decreased significantly.
    The 15-year-old Diana Murtazova, as many other children in Beslan are still in need of medical and psychological help. She was among the hostages at school along with her mother Fatima and two younger sisters. During the storming of the building she suffered basal skull fracture. Doctors in Vladikavkaz and Moscow said she wouldn't survive. But she was saved by the German doctors from a clinic in Frankfort on the Main. Diana will live, but most likely will never be able to work. She still needs an intensive therapy and a lot of expensive drugs.
    "Of course it is not enough. Her [Diana's] pension as an invalid is 4,500 roubles [USD 140]. So, I have to pay almost everything she needs like medicines and other staff, myself," says Diana's mother Fatima, who also was wounded during the siege. Fatima, as well as her children, still has serious psychological problems. She is afraid to leave the house, and never leaves her children unattended, even for a short time.
    "There is no feeling of security. I don't know what happens when I go out. I am mostly afraid for the children. If I have to go out somewhere I always take children with me," says Fatima. For people like Diana and Fatima a central and coordinated long-term rehabilitation program was never set up in Beslan.
    September 1st will mark the fifth anniversary of a massacre that killed more children - 186 of them - than any other terrorist attack in history. Seventeen children lost both parents and 72 were seriously disabled.
    City Of Angels, a cemetery where most of the 333 people who died in Beslan school massacre were laid to rest, is the most frequently visited place in town. Portraits of children look from the marble headstones, row after row. Five years on Beslan is still haunted by its past and its recovery from its unimaginable grief is long way away.
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