Wednesday, September 08, 2004

Russian nationalists do not believe Putin's propaganda

This is what kind of doubts about the official version of the events in Beslan, North Ossetia, they expressed on the website of the Slavic Union:

«The storm did take place, and it was planned; it is evident to anybody whose brains have not yet turned sour under the influence of the well-known substance or under the slow speeches of mister president. And this is actually what the authorities are saying indirectly too. Listen to the mass media – nothing but discrepancies between what one bureaucrat says after another. ORT TV says that the second blast was when Spetznaz (special forces) blew up a wall for the hostages to get out. NTV says that the second blast was when the gunmen detonated a bomb to kill the people. ORT again (some FSB agent) says: 3 terrorists were captured and in the morning they took part in identification of the bodies of other terrorists who were killed. NTV (Deputy Prosecutor General Fridinsky) says: there were 26 terrorists, all of them were eliminated, so far no one has been captured (yeah, right! -- and it’s followed by Putin’s order to block all borders) :)).

The version about an 'accidental blast' is laughable, and its 'confirmations' are even more laughable: about 5 testimonies of former hostages, when EACH ONE OF THEM is saying a totally different thing compared to what other ones were saying (one says: a bomb fell from a basketball backboard; another one says: a female suicide bomber blew herself up; the third one says: the gunmen were messing with a tripwire mine and it went off, etc.).

The version about an «argument among the gunmen» about whether to leave or to stay is a total idiocy and I’m not going to comment on it. The only thing I can say is that blowing up bombs 'right near you' is a good way to express a disagreement :).

There are a few reasons why the version about an intentional blast inside the school is swept aside as well. First, why the hell would the gunmen need to blow up hostages at that moment? One o’clock in the afternoon is a very wrong time for breaking out of the surrounded perimeter, it’s even hard to imagine anything worse than that. Second, after the school compound was stormed, sappers and a couple of top FSB (KGB) officers were hanging around the TV cameras and expressing their surprise at the scale and the quality of how the school was mined. At the same time they were claiming that all explosives were connected with multi-channel wires, which allowed setting off all bombs from many locations inside the school. So why didn’t the gunmen set them off, since they decided to kill the hostages? And here is even more interesting question: how did they manage to detonate just one bomb without detonating the rest of them? And finally, in a confined space the rest of the explosives would have probably gone off by themselves from the shockwave.

So, it must have been a pinpoint blast from the outside, which can be confirmed by the way the building was damaged. In order to bring down the roof from the inside, the gunmen would have had to fasten several kilograms of explosives right under it and set them up along one of the walls (judging by the damages done to the roof). Why would they bother doing it in the first place, while they could just kill most of the hostages by using handmade explosive devices set up in the gym (while effect of collapsed roof would be doubtful in this case)?

The blast that did take place would have had to make one of the gym’s walls collapse if the explosive devices were set up correctly (and if they were more powerful). Why would the gunmen even need something like that? But most likely, this is exactly what Spetznaz (special forces) wanted to do, so that some of the hostages could leave the building before a presumed detonation of explosive devices by the terrorists.

The second blast was from the outside as well, but that time it was in the lower part of the same side wall. It can be confirmed by the fact that the hostages, who were right at the wall at that moment, were not harmed (and afterwards they were one of the first ones to get out of the building).

Most likely, that blast was either an addition to the first one (i.e. the mission was to make the wall collapse, but for some reason both blasts were not synchronized and did not occur simultaneously), or it was made in order to let the hostages escape through the windows that were blocked by the gunmen (which is what happened).

Russian Emergencies Ministry was used solely for the purpose of diverting the attention of the gunmen (the storming unit had the reasons to assume that most of the militants would concentrate near the school entrance to control the emergency units). However, some of the militants still remained at their positions and on the second floor and opened fire on the Spetznaz units, who attempted to break into the building right after the windows were unblocked. And by the way, the big question still remains: who killed more hostages in the middle of that turmoil – gunmen, special forces, or armed locals, who started shooting at the 'gunmen' running out of the gym?

Sure, the government does not want to claim responsibility for the deaths among the hostages; this is why the government made up a script about «forced offensive to defend hostages» (exactly the way it happened during the Moscow theater siege).

KAVKAZ Center

# ANTENNA SHARON | 1:33:00 pm |