EUROPE Court condemns Russia handling of school siege
LONDON — 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 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 Putin’s government 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 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. 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 court’s ruling 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. 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 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.”
The court ordered Russia to pay about $3.14 million in damages and about $93,000 in legal costs.
The Justice Ministry said it would appeal.