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| Torshin doubts Beslan hard boyz were high |
| 2004-10-20 |
| Alexander Torshin, the head of a parliamentary commission investigating last month's Beslan school hostage crisis, on Tuesday questioned officials' contentions that the raiders were using narcotics, saying he believes they were deranged by an unknown drug. The Prosecutor General's Office this week said autopsies of the terrorists showed that several had higher-than-lethal doses of narcotics and that some apparently had run out of drugs, inducing withdrawal symptoms "that are accompanied by aggressive and inappropriate behavior." Torshin, the deputy speaker of the Federation Council, said he was uncomfortable with the prosecutor's office's contention. "This answer did not suit me," he told Ekho Moskvy radio. "I think they were using something completely new." Torshin and two other members of the commission were in Beslan on Tuesday to interview former hostages. Itar-Tass on Tuesday quoted an Interior Ministry drugs expert as saying the hostage-takers could have been using phencyclidine, also known as PCP or "angel dust." "This forbidden substance sharply raises the physical and psychological activity of a person; he does not receive painful sensations," Boris Kalachev was quoted as saying. Kalachev speculated that Chechen rebels could have produced PCP clandestinely. Also Tuesday, the federal command center for Chechen operations said it had received information from captured rebels that rebel leaders Shamil Basayev and Aslan Maskhadov had decided to try to increase drug dependency among young Chechens to lure them into rebel bands. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |