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Ten years later, European court studies Beslan siege
A decade on, survivors and families of victims of the Beslan school siege have asked European justice officials to examine the extent of Moscow's responsibility for the bloody outcome.The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) heard accusations from more than 400 Russians seeking clarifications about the incident in which pro-Chechen militants stormed a school in North Ossetia on September 1, 2004. The ordeal left more than 330 dead, including 186 children, and some 750 wounded. The court is treating all petitions made between 2007 and 2011 as a single case. Twenty of the claimants, mainly women, made the journey to Strasbourg to attend the hearing before seven judges. Aneta Gadiyeva showed a photo of the daughter she lost in the slaughter. "She would be almost 20 today," she said. Gadiyeva was among the hostages but was released with her other daughter, who was just one at the time. She said, "I think the government wanted to kill the terrorists above everything. They didn’t think of our children." The authorities said they had been faced with a group of armed mercenaries and that their primary concern was to save the lives of the hostages. But the defendants' lawyers said the authorities had been mainly seeking to eliminate the attackers. British lawyer Jessica Gavron said, "Both tanks and flame-throwers were used while hostages were in the building. The government has provided no adequate explanation as to the need of these indiscriminate combat weapons." Russian officials have maintained that the first explosions were provoked by the hostage takers. Their lawyer, Gorgy Matyushkin, also said that the rapid cleansing of the site after the operation "had no consequences" on the investigations. The claimants' lawyers have particularly criticized the absence of in-depth autopsies on the bodies of 116 victims found burned in the gymnasium. Posted by: ryuge 2014-10-15 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=402063 |