Relatives of casualties in special operation in Dagestan demand to have bodies for burial

On September 19, in Makhachkala, about thirty relatives of the persons who perished during the special operation conducted on September 17 in the Suleiman-Stalskiy District of Dagestan held a picket near the building of the Prosecutor's Office of Dagestan, demanding the bodies to be given out to them for burial.

According to the information of the Republic's FSB, during the counterterrorist operation in the Suleiman-Stalskiy District of Dagestan, 10 militants were killed. One employee of the FSB Department was killed, and another one was wounded. Under the FSB's version, the liquidated group of militants had planned a Beslan-like school capture.

Relatives of eight out of the ten casualties, who rallied at the Prosecutor's Office, asserted that their children were not terrorists. Two months ago in Derbent a fight burst out after a wedding party, in which a man was killed. Four participants of the fight, afraid of punishment for the murder, went to hide in the woods. The others, as their relatives assert, were summoned to interrogations to the UBOP (Department to Fight Organized Crime) and asked to disclose the whereabouts of their friends. After that, the rest of them went to the woods, the "Gazeta.Ru" reports.

According to the picketers, the investigation had failed to ascribe any crimes to five out of ten persons murdered in the special operation. However, their bodies cannot be given out without a permit of Kasumbek Amirbekov, head of the Republic's Investigatory Department.

The casualties' parents assert that they have already been approached by intermediaries, who offered to help them to get the bodies for 1 million roubles.