In order to understand the Beslan tragedy, it is necessary to have at least the chronology of these first three days of September in Beslan. Here it is.
September 1st 2003. 9:08AM. The holiday in the yard of Beslan’s School Number 1 on Komintern Street began at nine o’clock. The school is big; it has 890 students and 57 teachers. This is a complex of buildings forming the letter E on the city map. And suddenly people in camouflage run in the schoolyard through the gates on Komintern Street. Most of them wear camouflage ski masks. Those without masks have beards. They gather the people through the gates to the gymnasium shooting in the air from their guns. In the gymnasium they order the hostages to sit on the floor and not to move. At the same time the people in camouflage start to mine the gymnasium.
10:17AM, same day. The first three motorcycle divisions start to move to Beslan from Ossetia’s capital Vladikavkaz. From 11:30 the school is surrounded by divisions of the 58th army.
11:05AM The militants pass a message through the hostage Larisa Mamitova, a doctor, in which they express their intention to negotiate only with the president of North Ossetia Dzasokhov, Ingushetia’s president Ziazikov and Dr. Roshal. (Later, one of the witnesses on the trial of Nurpashi Kulayev, the only surviving militant, will tell that the militants wanted to see Rushailo, executive secretary of the RF and not Roshal.) The terrorists gave their phone number 8-928-728-33-74, however the number did not respond. The terrorists did not write the last two numbers right. Mamitova gives the message and tells the Ossetian fighter who put his gun on the grass and took her message that there are 1300 hostages in the school. She returns inside.
At 4:05PM a hostage came out of the school again with a new message. The message contains the last name of a person, with which the militants would like to talk: the presidential adviser A. Aslakhanov. A phone number for contacts was written again: 8-928-728-33-47. With this number the negotiator, a lieutenant colonel of North Ossetia’s FSB managed to get in contact with the militants in the school. The militant called himself a suicide bomber and said that he blew up twenty hostages in one of the classes. The reason is that the terrorists were upset that they heard the first lie on television and radio: there are supposedly only 354 hostages. At the same time six hostages managed to escape during the second half of the day on September 1st. They were questioned about the situation in the school. It turned out that the hostages were distributed by groups and located in different parts of the school. Most of the people were in the gymnasium. In other parts of the school there were groups of one hundred people and above. The report of the Beslan police chief at 4:20PM of that day indicates: the number of hostages is over 700; the lists are being verified. According to the North Ossetian parliamentary commission (the text is cited in Novaya Gazeta, issue 64, 2005): “The next two days the official representatives of the headquarters, including its nominal leader, general V. A. Andreyev, told the media about 354 hostages. This deliberate lie, according to the numerous testimonies of the hostages, led to the growing aggression of the terrorists. And also became the cause of the execution of some male hostages, whose bodies were thrown out of the window of the literature office, from the second floor. (The suicide-bomber was talking about them when he said that he “blew up twenty hostages”. And it is to take them that four agents of the Ministry of Emergencies will arrive at 1 o’clock on September 3rd and the raid will begin.)
2:00PM. Beslan. Anti-crisis headquarters. In Beslan’s city hall. Actually, there are two headquarters in the same building. Or even several. One gets the impression that already the first day, in the first hours, all efforts were made to scatter responsibility and cover those who really gave the orders in Beslan. On the first day several structures from the FSB, the 58th army, and the ministry of Interior, the functionaries and North Ossetia executive power are formed. It is supposedly president Dzasokhov who manages all. But neither the site of dislocation is defined nor the actions are coordinated. On the second day of the terrorist act the general Andreyev, head of North Ossetia’s FSB, becomes the leader of the counter-terrorist operation (according to Torshin’s report, Putin personally appointed general Andreyev). About one day and a half was spent for the appointment of this “pointsman”.
2:27PM Mozdok. Airport. The FSB director Patrushev arrives from Moscow. However from Mozdok he does not go to the anti-crisis headquarters. Nobody will see him there in the next two days. Still, there are lots of high officials there in the headquarters. General Vasily Andreyev, president Dzasokhov, parliament speaker Taymuraz Mamsurov, State Duma deputies Rogozin and Markelov, deputy Prosecutor General Fredinsky. Later that day Patrushev’s deputies Pronichev and Anisimov arrive from Moscow, as well as the head of the FSB Center of special assignment general Alexander Tikhonov, commanding the groups Alpha and Vimpel. And also the FSB head of the South Federal District, general Kaloyev. (Notice that general Valery Andreyev commands his own bosses!) However in reality it is not chaos, as various journalists who investigated Beslan’s tragedy interpret it. The methodic of covering up responsibility is in play. Here is what Novaya Gazeta writes (issue 64, 2005): “At the same time, the witnesses who were present in the headquarters say that Moscow’s FSB agents and employees of the presidential administration created their own parallel headquarters, where neither Andreyev nor even Dzasokhov could go. The role of Pronichev and Anisimov in the administration of the Counter-terrorist headquarters is not clear to this day. The materials of the criminal case do not contain their interrogations as direct witnesses.”
But who are these representatives of the presidential administration? Here they are in the report of the North Ossetian parliamentary commission. I cite Novaya Gazeta again: “According to the North Ossetian commission it is the representatives of the federal center who bear responsibility for the deliberately false information about the hostages: the employee of the presidential administration, deputy press-secretary of the RF president Dmitry Peskov and the employee of Moscow’s State Broadcasting Company office Vasilyev. According to the testimony of the vice-speaker (of the Ossetian parliament) Kesayev on September 2nd he was called to the operational headquarters to talk about informing the population about the real quantity of hostages in the school. The Moscovites presented themselves as employees of the presidential administration’s information department and asked him not to disclose any information that contradicts the official version.” Actually, this is a criminal offense. But who cares. The North Ossetian commission turned out to be much more honest than Torshin’s commission.
Ossetia’s president Dzasokhov was finally interrogated. He “admits several times that in essence all the decisions in Beslan were made by Patrushev’s deputies: the FSB generals Pronichev, Anisimov and Tikhonov.” Pronichev, first deputy director of FSB, a general-colonel, already has the necessary experience of “liberating” hostages, in particular in the Theater Center on Dubrovka. With gas. When they killed 129 hostages, by official count. They killed them and thus liberated them.
The North Ossetian commission is convinced that the real leaders of the Counter-terrorist operation were high FSB officials. The commission harshly criticizes the fact that the criminal case does not contain the interrogations of the main participants of the counter-terrorist operation: generals Pronichev, Anisimov and Tikhonov and the FSB director Patrushev.