September 2nd. Second half of the day. Anti-crisis headquarters. Roshal, whom nobody called, tries to convince the terrorists to make concessions by phone. They answer “No!” to everything.
The North Ossetian commission concludes: “ By the end of the second day nobody from the high federal officials, whose functions at least partly include the negotiation of the demands put forward by the militants, accepted to negotiate with the terrorists. /…/ By entrusting the negotiations to the regional functionaries, to the Special Forces, to a pediatrician as well as to M. Gurtziev and R. Aushev (S. Shoigu has personally asked him about it), the RF authorities have in essence distanced themselves from the responsibility and condemned the entire negotiation process to failure.”
September 2nd. Beslan. 4:30PM. The headquarters head Andreyev ordered Sobolev, the commander of the 58th army, to provide tanks and armored vehicles to the FSB special assignment center on their demand. At 5 o’clock Sobolev asked a tank division to Beslan. At 6:15PM the tanks arrived to Beslan. Viktor Sobolev, the commander of the 58th army also gave six armored vehicles to the FSB.
By midnight on September 2nd the speaker of North Ossetia’s parliament Mamsurov and the State Duma deputy Rogozin sketched the project of an agreement with the terrorists. The project is essentially about negotiations of the federal leadership with Maskhadov, the plan of an autonomy status for Chechnya and a gradual withdrawal of troops.
September 3rd. 7:30AM. Beslan. Anti-crisis headquarters. The negotiations with the terrorists lasted until 2 o’clock in the morning. The headquarters tried to obtain the transfer of medicaments, water and food to the school. “The Colonel”, leader of the terrorists, kept giving the same answer: “The hostages don’t need food or water. They have declared a hunger-strike to their government.” After long telephone conversations the Ingushetian businessman Gutzeriev, who gradually becomes the principal negotiator, manages to convince the terrorists that the corpses must be removed from the schoolyard and from Komintern Street. They have been laying there for almost two days on the sun and the rain.
September 3rd. 10:30AM. Beslan. The houses closest to the school are already evacuated. Most of them are still empty. However four commandos from the Alpha group appear in house number 37. They fix a machine-gun. Gradually other positions are occupied around the school.
September 3rd. 1:00PM. Beslan. A truck enters the school territory from Komintern Street. Two employees of the Ministry of Emergencies stand inside. The vehicle is moving slowly, almost crawling. The terrorists agreed that the corpses that have lain there for two days now must be removed from the schoolyard. The clock shows 1:01PM. Maybe 1:02. Maybe 1:03. An explosion is heard from the direction of the school, a powerful one. Than another and a third one 10-20 minutes later.
The report of Torshin’s federal commission says the following: “At 1:05PM two powerful explosions took place in the school. According to some hostages the terrorists were intoxicated. Possibly because of this they lost the ability to control the explosive device and an explosion ensued.” That is all. One gets the impression that the commission purposely skipped the most important question of Beslan’s tragedy: what is the nature of the explosions, after which began the raid that led to the deaths of 331 hostages? In other words, who is responsible for the deaths of 331 people, 186 of whom were children?
The North Ossetian parliamentary commission (I cite Novaya Gazeta, issue 64): “From the testimonies of hostages and witnesses the conclusion can be made that the explosions in the gymnasium were a surprise for the militants themselves. Also there are a lot of witnesses who say that the explosions in the gymnasium were provoked from outside. Also there is information that none of the closed chains linking the explosive devices have detonated in the gymnasium. There is information that after the explosions in the gymnasium, sappers of the 58th army could demine most of the device. In all there were fourteen self-made explosive devices and four antipersonnel mines. Eleven explosive devices were found and demined.” The commission points out the following: “Thanks to the law quality of the investigation made by the Prosecutor General’s office about the causes of the first explosions, only the testimonies of the hostages and witnesses can be trusted. The absence of a qualified expertise in the commission’s criminal case seem definitely strange and calls for many questions.” The commission considers the version about the cause-and-effect link between the use of flame-throwers (the flame-throwers, rather their tubes were presented to Torshin’s commission by the victims: the Committee of Beslan’s Mothers) and the first explosions in the gymnasium as the main one because the official version claiming that the bomb exploded automatically or accidentally because of the militants’ actions is not supported by any evidence. The Ossetian commission also points out that “no traces of hard drugs were found in the bodies of the militants”, which corresponds to the testimonies of the hostages who emphasize the high professionalism of the terrorists and do not tend to consider the terrorists as banal drug addicts. We will turn to the extremely important question about the nature of the explosions at 1:02PM and 1:05PM in the end of this chapter, but now let us follow the tragedy to the end.
So, the first explosion at one o’clock coincided with the arrival of the truck with employees from the Ministry of emergencies. At the same time a second explosion followed. Right after the first two explosions the hostages started to get out through the broken windows (the terrorists have broken the windows in the beginning of the capture fearing that gas might be employed against them – like in the Center on Dubrovka.), first one by one, then by dozens and ran for their lives on the school’s territory. Shooting broke out from both sides. Immediately after the first two explosions general Andreyev gave the order to general Tikhonov (leader of the FSB special assignment center, commanding the Alpha and Vimpel groups) to start the military operation to save the hostages, i.e. to start the raid. The snipers of the intelligence group started to fire at the enemy. Fire trucks, ambulances, police and private vehicles were occupying positions around the school during these minutes. They picked up those who escaped and brought them to Beslan’s hospitals.
September 3rd. 1: 30PM. The roof of the gymnasium collapsed. An entire wing of the building caught fire. An armored vehicle is firing. The terrorists try to gather part of the hostages to the basement. And through the main hallway into the theater hall. This is how the German journalists saw this situation at 1:30: “ All of this looks like a planned storm from the other side, from Komintern Street. Two tanks arrive with armored vehicles; grenade and flamethrowers take position. We don’t see rescue equipment, only attack equipment. Combat helicopters of the MI-24 type arrive. The children and the elderly are running and crawling in all directions in the yard. Girls and mothers run away from the gymnasium almost with no clothes on.”
According to the unanimous testimony of the witnesses the combat helicopter appeared above the school right after 1:05AM or even at 1:04AM. I am of the opinion that the first explosions were not shots from flamethrowers but missiles from the helicopters. I watched how this is done in the Serbia wars.
2:00PM. There are seventy hostages in the cafeteria. The militants order the children to tear the white curtains from the walls, to go on the windows and to wave the curtains. And to shout “Don’t shoot, don’t shoot!” Nurpashi Kulayev, the future hero of the trial, in a training suit, unarmed, joins the hostages. “I didn’t kill anybody here. They forced me.”