Beslan inquiry damns local police

RUSSIA - After one year and three months and more than 1000 witness interviews, the chairman of the official inquiry into last year's Beslan school massacre broke his silence yesterday and launched a devastating critique of law-enforcement authorities.

In what he called "preliminary findings", MP Alexander Torshin confounded his critics who have accused him of being soft on the authorities.

Though his criticism did not go far enough to satisfy Beslan's bereaved mothers, it went much further than anyone expected and was especially damning when it came to authorities in Beslan and North Ossetia.

Torshin said local officers had been ordered to step up security around schools two weeks before the September 2004 tragedy but did nothing.

He made it clear he thought they were guilty of "negligence, incompetence and carelessness".

Acting on intelligence that schools might be targeted by pro-Chechen militants, Torshin said Russia's Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev had sent a telegram to local police two weeks prior to the school seizure.

The telegrams told police to beef up security around all schools on September 1, the first day of the school year.

The warning was ignored and on that day a solitary policewoman was on duty at Beslan's school number one when 1128 children and parents were taken hostage by around 30 gunmen.

The policewoman was herself taken hostage and in the bloodshed that followed 331 innocents lost their lives, 186 of whom were children. "There were warning telegrams ... on August 21 and August 31," Torshin told Parliament. "These instructions could have averted a terrorist act. However, they were not fulfilled."

In fact, said Torshin, the terrorists appeared far better organised than the police. "The bandits had a plan of the school, while the police had to hunt for [a plan of the school] for a long time."

Torshin said the operation to free the hostages was "plagued by shortcomings" and that local police had simply not been up to the job.

"The list of failures is long. Many law-enforcement officers did not know how to act in an emergency."

He reserved special scorn for Valery Andreyev, head of the local FSB security service, whom he chided for poor inter-services co-ordination. Andreyev was the man who decided to lie to the world's media and claim there were just 354 hostages in the school as opposed to 1128.

The claim was heard by the terrorists on the radio and a separate inquiry has suggested it may have prompted them to shoot a group of men and throw them out of a window.

However, in remarks that will enrage Beslan's bereaved mothers, Torshin rejected criticism of the use of flame-throwers and grenade launchers by special forces, arguing they saved lives and were only used when the school was empty of hostages.

He also dismissed a theory that the end of the siege's bloodshed began when a Russian sniper shot a militant whose foot was resting on a detonator for bombs set up over the hostages.

Torshin said he would present fuller findings in the near future and made it clear he also intended to talk about the role of federal authorities.

Vladimir Rhyzhkov, an independent MP, criticised him for not examining federal failings now.

"It is an attempt to put the blame on regional and local law enforcers and not on the federal ministries who in my view bear responsibility for what happened," Rhyzhkov said. "They didn't check how their orders were being carried out."

In Beslan, Savkuz Dzhusov said he was unimpressed by Torshin's report. "It is all fiction. They will lie again and nobody will be held accountable for the dead children."

Valiko Margiyev, who was held hostage with his wife and 12-year-old daughter, said he was outraged at Torshin referring to the fact that 73 per cent of the hostages had survived.

"The most horrible thing Torshin said is ... that the operation was considered successful because only 27 per cent of the hostages had been killed." Five senior policemen have been charged with criminal negligence and one of the militants, the only one to be captured alive, continues to stand trial for his role in the massacre.

Though Torshin did not mince his words, he reminded people that while there were official failings the real culprits were the pro-Chechen rebels who were willing to risk innocent children's lives to clinch their demands.

"It is the terrorists who came to attack a school who are the people to blame. They came to destabilise the situation in the North Caucasus," said Torshin.

- INDEPENDENT