New York Times (April 14, 2017)
European Court Faults Russia’s Handling of
2004 Beslan School Siege
By SEWELL CHAN
LONDON — The Russian authorities ignored warnings of an impending terrorist attack and then violated European human rights law when they stormed a school seized by Chechen militants in September 2004, resulting in the deaths of more than 330 hostages, a court ruled on Thursday.
The ruling, by the European Court of Human Rights in a case brought by relatives of the victims, amounted to a stinging critique of how President Vladimir V. Putin’s government had handled the crisis.
The court found that the authorities had received “sufficiently specific information of a planned terrorist attack in the area, linked to an educational institution,” but that they had not done enough to disrupt the plot, prevent the attackers from traveling on the day of the attack, protect the school or notify the public of the threat.
The Kremlin immediately rejected the findings. “It’s impossible for us, a country that has been repeatedly attacked by terrorists, to agree with such wording,” said the government’s top spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov.
The school siege, in the town of Beslan in North Ossetia, a part of the North Caucasus region in Russia, began around 9 a.m. on Sept. 1, 2004 — the first day of school — when more than 30 militants stormed School No. 1, taking more than 1,100 hostages, including more than 770 children. The militants were followers of the Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev.
It was one in a string of attacks in Russia in the early years of Mr. Putin’s leadership, including the takeover of a Moscow theater in October 2002, which ended in a bloody assault by special forces that resulted in the deaths of more than 100 hostages.
In 2004, Chechen militants struck with frightening ferocity. They killed more than 40 people on a crowded subway in Moscow on Feb. 6; assassinated Chechnya’s president on May 9; and blew up two civilian planes after they left Domodedovo Airport in Moscow on Aug. 24, killing 90 people.
The court’s ruling on Thursday offered a vivid account of what quickly became a defining trauma in Russia’s modern history.
“The militants turned the school into an improvised stronghold and mined the gymnasium,” the court found. “They executed a number of hostages, refused to accept any offers aimed at alleviating the hostages’ situation and, starting from 2 September, denied even drinking water to their victims.”
The Beslan siege stretched across three days. It ended around 1 p.m. on Sept. 3, when two powerful explosions were set off in the gymnasium, blasting a hole in the wall through which several hostages tried to escape. Militants fired on them before exchanging gunfire with the security forces, who were then ordered to storm the building.
The militants rounded up the surviving hostages, about 300 people, and forced them to go to other parts of the school, while dead, wounded and traumatized hostages stayed in the gymnasium.
Flames spread, and the roof collapsed around 3:30 p.m.
In all, more than 330 people were killed — including 12 members of the security forces — and hundreds of others were wounded. One militant was captured, and the rest were killed.
The security forces were armed with tanks, rockets, grenade launchers, flamethrowers and other weapons. The court found that the use of such lethal force “contributed to the casualties among the hostages” and violated the “right to life” by failing to restrict lethal force to what was “absolutely necessary.”
found that the operation’s command structure “suffered from a lack of formal leadership, resulting in serious flaws in decision making and coordination with other relevant agencies.”
The court said that the Russian authorities had fallen short on their obligation to protect life. “The security arrangement at the school had not been heightened; the local police had not taken sufficient measures to reduce the risks; no warning had been given to the school administration, or to the public attending the ceremony; and no single sufficiently high-level structure had been responsible for the handling of the situation,” the court found.
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The court ordered Russia to pay 2.955 million euros (about $3.14 million) in damages and €88,000 in legal costs.
In a statement, the Justice Ministry said it would appeal. Russia ratified the European Convention on Human Rights, the treaty that established the court, in 1998. A total of 447 Russians filed applications to the court from June 2007 to May 2011. The named plaintiff in the case is Emma Tagayeva, who lost two sons and her husband in the massacre.
“The payment will be divided among 406 claimants — some will get €5,000, others €20,000,” the Tass news agency quoted Aneta Gadieva, a representative of a committee known as the Mothers of Beslan, as saying. “These are modest payments to compensate for moral harm.”
The main purpose of the litigation was to identify those who were at fault, not to obtain compensation, she said.
There have been several Russian domestic investigations into the siege.
In the Russian government’s main inquiry — which is still underway — officials were found to have acted reasonably and lawfully.
In a separate proceeding, the sole surviving hostage taker, Nurpashi Kulayev, was sentenced to life imprisonment.
Yuri P. Savelyev, who served on a parliamentary commission that investigated the attack, and who presented a separate report criticizing the government’s handling of the case, said it had never been about money.
“I’m pleased that the claim filed by the Mothers of Beslan has been upheld,” he said on Thursday. “I believe this is as it should be.”
The people of Beslan, he said, “were devastated by both terrorists and the state, the system, which didn’t take into account their demands that everything be objectively sorted out.”
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