Was it only two years ago?
With melancholy music playing over loudspeakers, hundreds filed past photographs and lighted candles to place red carnations on the floor of the school’s gymnasium, where several dozen Islamic militants took more than 1,100 students, teachers and parents hostage on Sept. 1, 2004.
The three-day ordeal, which saw hostages deprived of food and water, ended in a bloodbath after two powerful explosions rocked the school and security forces launched a chaotic rescue effort. More than half the 333 victims were children; most were killed by the blasts and ensuing gunfire or were burned to death in the blaze sparked by the explosions.
I cried for days for the children who died there, victims of an agenda so far beyond their control or understanding, and the tragedy of Beslan still haunts me. It seems as if it was both yesterday, and another lifetime ago.
Yuri Savelyev, a lawmaker who is also an explosives specialist, claimed the two blasts that triggered the inferno were caused by grenades fired from outside the school _ most probably launched by security forces _ and not by bombs set by militants inside, as prosecutors contend.
Ella Kesayeva, who heads an activist group called Voice of Beslan, said Savelyev’s findings coincide with their own. The group on Friday appealed Kulayev’s conviction and sentence to Russia’s Constitutional Court, saying the lower court that heard the case ignored crucial details about the seizure and its ending.
“We have arrived at the conclusion that it’s the state to blame for the death of the hostages,” she said.
No. They’re not. No matter how badly bungled, the government did not set that situation up… and that man should never be freed. Never.