Posted on 03/26/2006 12:56:18 AM PST by Number57
MOSCOW (Reuters) - A Russian court on Thursday began trying three local policemen for failing to stop the 2004 Beslan school massacre but victims' relatives said they were being made scapegoats for the mistakes of their superiors.
The three policemen are the only officials being prosecuted over the bloodbath, which happened after gunmen linked to separatists in Chechnya seized the school. The death toll from the siege was 331 people, half of them children.
Prosecutors told the trial in Beslan that the officers' carelessness allowed the heavily-armed gunmen to slip through a security cordon and reach Beslan.
"As a result of their negligence 331 people died," Interfax news agency quoted prosecutors as saying.
Some relatives say high-ranking officials should also be held to account for running a chaotic rescue attempt which many believe made the bloodshed worse.
No senior officials have been publicly punished over the rescue.
"It was not just these three who were to blame for all those deaths," Ella Kesayeva, the head of Voice of Beslan, the main pressure group for victims' relatives, told Reuters.
"We are categorically against making these three into scapegoats and heaping all the blame on (them)."
The only alleged hostage-taker to survive, Nurpashi Kulayev, is being tried separately on murder and terrorism charges. A verdict in his case is expected soon.
"...just remember the kids gunned down by those Islamofacists."
A digusting atrocity it was. I seem to recall that it was thought there had been collusion (sp?) on the part of some workers, maybe like maintenance workers, as there were bombs etc. that had been smuggled into the school and planted. Maybe that proved not true.
Background:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1209052/posts
The Beslan Horror- When Hell Came Calling
various FR links | 09-07-04 | The Heavy Equipment Guy
Thanks for that info. I wonder why none of those people have been charged with anything.
Love your spatula city tag line, btw, very cute!
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