"Voice of Beslan" demands international investigation of Beslan terror act

The all-Russian public organization "Voice of Beslan" demands an international investigation into the terror act in Beslan. Ella Kesaeva, co-chair of the organization, emphasizes that the decision to appeal to the international community was adopted because of Russia's failure to hold an objective investigation and inspectors' refusal to institute criminal prosecution against high-ranking officials.

We remind you that on June 4 this year the "Voice of Beslan" filed an application to the RF's Public Prosecutor asking to interrogate former Russian President, now Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, as a witness on the case about the terror act in Beslan school in September 2004. The "Voice of Beslan" is also collecting documents for the General Prosecutor's Office with a demand to initiate a criminal case against Vladimir Putin.

On September 3, Ella Kesaeva said on air of the "Echo Moskvy" Radio that public activists were logging subscriptions under petition to the international community, and during three days only more than two thousand persons had signed-in.

Let us note here that according to Ms Kesaeva, the demand of the "Voice of Beslan" to interrogate Mr Putin was rejected under the pretext that President Putin, not in the position by that time, did not take part in the counterterrorist operation, therefore, he cannot be interrogated.

"We find this formulation to be absurd. Besides, the inspectors have breached the law. After considering our application they should have either initiated a criminal case or written a refusal to do it. However, they treated the application as a petition and just rejected it. In fact, they have ignored it," Ella Kesaeva said in her interview to the "Izbranny".

According to the co-chair of the public organization, the terror act victims have no hope to achieve anything in Russia and want to seek justice at the European Court for Human Rights. These days, a memory watch is held in the school yard. Members of the organization are there all the day round. Photos of casualties' bodies are now exhibited in the school. According to Kesaeva, it was for the first time they were presented to the visitors of the memorial, and "not everybody liked it." Someone wanted to tear them off at night; therefore, people are on duty all the time near them.

Answering the question among whom those guilty of the terror act and numerous victims should be looked for, Kesaeva has noted that it is necessary to analyse decisions and actions of Russian officers, "who, instead of rescuing children by all means, did what they did."

"I think that the refusal to negotiate with terrorists was a crime in itself. This refusal had doomed the hostages to death. They were lying to us, who stood behind the school, that negotiations were held and everything was done to rescue people, but at the trial the head of the operation said that the terrorists had moved political claims, and under the federal law on war on terrorism, in case of political claims, no negotiations are held. It means that this law is contradictory to the Constitution, which guarantees the right to life to everyone," Ms Kesaeva asserts.