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Here's an old article that caught my eye, on a depressing topic. From Kommersant:

A ‘Nord-Ost’ victim is buried in absentia

"It all happened because of the television"

"You didn’t bury anyone, you don’t even have a coffin!"

This week the last victim of the terrorist attack at Dubrovka will be buried at the Khimkinsk cemetery, more than eight months after the attack. To be more precise, an empty urn will be placed in the earth, in memory of Gennady Vlakh, who died on October 26^th, and of whom not even the ashes remain. Just like the terrorists who killed him.

Gunman number 50

On October 23^rd, 2002, a group of terrorists led by Movsar Barayev took hostage about 900 spectators and actors at the musical ‘Nord-Ost’. During the terrorist attack and the ensuing storming of the theater on October 26^th 129 of the hostages died.

All of the terrorists were killed during the storming of the theater. Immediately after the liberation of the hostages, the special services troops began to count the bodies of the terrorists. They counted 49 Chechens – 31 men and 18 women. In a corner of the foyer, however, they discovered yet another corpse – a Slavic appearing man whose front teeth had been knocked out. There were no documents in the dead man’s pockets, and so he was included with the terrorists, as number 50.

The dead gunmen were taken to city morgue #4. There their fingerprints were recorded, and blood tests and samples for DNA testing were taken. They were also photographed in various poses, and then, it was later determined, they were sent to the crematorium and burned. Whither the ashes of the bandits, well, a commission from the Moscow city prosecutor’s office charged with solving murders is simply not saying. It is apparently confidential.

The unidentified man with Slavic features was at first included with the gunmen. Even if he was not a Chechen, he was at the very least an accomplice.

One needs to give the commission its due. Its employees did not just sit around, and in six months they found out the names of the majority of Barayev’s team, as well as the name of “the accomplice”. By careful study of the videos that the terrorists made at the theater, the detectives made note of a man who ran into the hall and began to shout “Roman Gennadyvich”. They were not able to determine the surname of this Roman Gennadyvich from the videos – it was either Lakhov or Brakhov. It was visible on the videos how two gunmen grabbed the shouting man and took him from the hall. Later, according to witnesses, the sound of automatic gunfire was heard.

And so, on June 19^th, 2003, the chief prosecutor of Moscow, Mikhail Avdyukov declared that they had “identified the corpse of a Muscovite with Slavic appearance”, who until the very end had been considered an accomplice of the terrorists. “We have reconstructed his real name,” declared Mikhail Avdyukov. The man killed by the terrorists turned out to be 39 year-old Gennady Vlakh.

How he chanced to be in the theater on the day of the assault, October 26^th, having passed through all the police cordons and barricades, will forever remain a mystery.

The only thing remaining for his family to do was to buy an urn, but it would have to be buried empty – at the Moscow city prosecutor’s office they were told that his ashes were no longer in existence. What had happened to them was unknown. Father Sergey Radonezhsky at the Khimkinsk church calmed the Vlakhs, saying that it would not bother church ritual, and promised that the day of the empty urn’s burial, this week, would serve as the deceased’s 40th day of purgatory, after which he would depart for heaven.