Prosecution's evidence dubious

An investigation experiment conducted in Moscow was meant to answer the question how many gunmen could have taken part in the attack on school No 1 in Beslan, a question that continues to cause much debate. Some of the hostages state that the gunmen were more than 32.

The organisers of the experiment were trying to find out if 32 gunmen could have come to the school in one GAZ-66 truck.

Thirty-two people in full military outfit, munitions, and explosives got into the vehicle, according to a Radio Echo of Moscow correspondent who attended the experiment. However, when journalists asked the organisers to remove the tent of the truck to see how the experiment participants were seated there, they saw the following: the soldiers were sitting on each other's lap and many were standing, bent down. Meanwhile, the gunmen had been supposed to go a six-hour way in such a position. Normally, the GAZ-66 is meant to transport 24 people.

The organisers gave the positive answer to the main question of the experiment though: a GAZ-66 really could admit 32 gunmen, although this was difficult.

Yuri Saveliev, a member of the parliamentary commission investigating the terrorist act in Beslan, said that "if they had been patient enough, they could have come to the school in such a condition." However, he remarked that many witnesses spoke about "piles of sacks and weapons."

"There is nothing like that here. This point needs additional investigation. Everything is possible in theory though," he said.

Vitalii Bengarskii, a military expert who attended the experiment, doubted the possibility that the terrorists could have held out in a vehicle in a crush like that for nearly six hours.

Ella Kesayev, a member of the Beslan Mothers Committee, says the Prosecutor General's Office has a "scheme" which it is trying to fill with facts and prove. Otherwise, the investigation is actually in the same stage as it was before the arrival of Mr Kolesnikov (a deputy prosecutor general whom President Vladimir Putin had sent to control the course of the investigation — ed.), according to her.

A total of 32 terrorists took part in the school seizure, according to the main version of Prosecutor General's Office.

Ms Kesayev says that no evidence of witnesses who say that they saw more terrorists is taken into account. She also says that Mr Kolesnikov is engaged with some financial inspections in the republic currently, not with rendering the investigation a new impulse.

"Three hundred people had been alive before the onslaught began, and this onslaught had been planned. Only 21 had been killed, mostly men. They had not actually touched women and children. People began to be killed at 1.00 pm on 3 September during that allegedly accidental onslaught," says Ms Kesayev. Beslan Mothers believe that the first explosion had been provoked and they claim to have proofs.

Ms Kesayev who studied biochemistry at college maintains that flamethrowers were used in the school. "Early on 4 September, Emergency Ministry soldiers were raking aside this very gymnasium, and our children lay there in exactly the same way as when they had been alive, they were not torn apart, but burnt absolutely. This is the effect of flamethrowers. I've made inquiries, flamethrowers have an effect exactly on organics. The children were burnt down, this is clear by what they looked like when we buried them," says the woman.