Beslan School Massacre

[mudbunny]

Does anyone know of any good sites or have any articles about the Beslan tragedy?

[sorwe]

Here's a good one Part 1. http://www.vialls.com/myahudi/beslanpsyop.html Part 2. http://www.vialls.com/myahudi/tabanuke.html

[American Patriot]

^^^ Tin foil hat alert.

[stuntman]

Here's a good one Part 1. http://www.vialls.com/myahudi/beslanpsyop.html Part 2. http://www.vialls.com/myahudi/tabanuke.html
Are you ****ing kidding me??????? You post lies in the name of DEAD children you jerk off!
from that website,
Title
Black Psyop at Russian School Controlled by Wall St.


Thanks to the Mistaravim psyop at Beslan school, most television viewers now believe Muslims are sub-humans who abduct, abuse, and deprive unarmed children of food and water, before callously raping and murdering them.


Unfortunately for the Zionist Cabal, foreknowledge and the premature use of this "Russia's 9-11" tag proved beyond doubt that Wall Street ordered the obscene mass murder in Beslan School, just as it has ordered the attack on the Moscow Theatre and the downing of the two Tupolev airliners. We will return to the sequence of events at Beslan School a little later, but first we need to examine the motive, because every black psyop ever mounted has had a motive. Though many Americans are in denial on this subject nowadays, the sole motive for all of these events was, and will always remain, the strategic and tactical control of eastern hemisphere crude oil supplies, without which the New Zion in America will surely wither and die.

Asshole!
Wow I cannot believe it but I call for your ban! In the name of dead children! SAD you are!

[Aerosoul]

I find it incredible that people can write and actually believe that ****. Wow. :|

[BusterHyman]

Come on now. If its on the internet it must be true.

[usafbalad]

:bash:


sorwe: Here's a good one


http://www.strangecosmos.com/images/content/2891.jpg

[Frosty]

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/wideangle/
I wasn't able to watch it. It looked to be more like running footage than editorial commentary though.
/out

[Morboute]

^^^ Tin foil hat alert.

x2

and i just had too....

http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/search.php?search_author=sorwe

[mudbunny]

I wasn't able to watch it. It looked to be more like running footage than editorial commentary though.
/out

I actually caught some of it, that's what lead me to post about it here. Damn, that was terrible. The scumbags who did that are all burning right now, no doubt. I'll just do a search on google, if I find anything interesting I'll post it here.

[Maj12]

Here's a good one Part 1. http://www.vialls.com/myahudi/beslanpsyop.html Part 2. http://www.vialls.com/myahudi/tabanuke.html

Hahaha....you're trolling, right? Either that or you are outright retarded...
:bash:

[Laworkerbee]

Here's a good one Part 1. http://www.vialls.com/myahudi/beslanpsyop.html Part 2. http://www.vialls.com/myahudi/tabanuke.html

Hahaha....you're trolling, right? Either that or you are outright retarded...
:bash:

I'm going to go with "outright retarded" :slap:

[alexz]

^^^ Tin foil hat alert.

The best quote from that retards page is
"While in Palestine, Russian President Vladimir Putin paid a diplomatic 3-minute visit to the Jewish "Wailing Wall", located provocatively below the Muslim Al-Aqsa Mosque"

The fact that it was build 2,000 years before the Al-Aqsa Mosque doesn't
impress that idiot. Altough i'm amazed that he can operate a computer.

[olowy]

sorwe did get my dushbag of the day award. :roll:

Even though the 2nd artickle has nothing to do with the request of the original request, this is another "Jews are the blame for everything" article. I did like the "When it comes to black ops and media deception, the Jews have very few equals" and the "Although the Jewish Talmud [the most barbaric and obscene 'holy' book ever published]" above the "Oiling the ZIonist Oil Machine picture".

I am not sure who is a greater dushbag, the one who writes this crap or the people who believe it.

It is is sad when a legitmate request for information/knowledge gets side-tracked with bulls**t.

[Ruledbyjames]

That is the spouting of a deranged individual. Nothing short of mad!!

[)I(EHbKA.]

today I read in the news that those survivors that are present at the only live terrorist's trial blame the securtity forces for the deaths of their relatives, friends not the terrorists, they say the storm should have began right after the school taking, that's prerry ****ed up, blaming people that that risled their lives as opposed to terrorists, I guess it's the caucasian syndrome

[<Gypsum Fantastic>]

today I read in the news that those survivors that are present at the only live terrorist's trial blame the securtity forces for the deaths of their relatives, friends not the terrorists, they say the storm should have began right after the school taking, that's prerry f*** up, blaming people that that risled their lives as opposed to terrorists, I guess it's the caucasian syndrome

That's sad, misdirected anger. Similar to that of the Iraqis who blame US soldiers for suicide bombings.

Although there have been questions about the tactics used, I simply don't know enough about what went on. Which is why, I assume, the creator of this thread asked for such info.

A note to certain posters... Please, post FACT not PROPOGANDA.

[-stk-]

*EDIT ------

[anonymous individual]

Al Qaeda’s Dread Touch Falls on Moscow, Beslan, Beersheba...
From DEBKA-Net-Weekly 172 of Sep 3, Updated by DEBKAfile
September 4, 2004, 6:26 PM (GMT+02:00)




On Friday, September 3, DEBKA-Net-Weekly 172 wrote:
It took White House spinmeisters less than a day to get President George W. Bush to modify the astonishing statement he made Monday, August 30, when he told NBC’s Today Show “I don’t think you can win” the war on terror but “you can you can create conditions so that those who use terror as a tool are less acceptable in parts of the world”.
Persuaded to reverse course by the flap his remark stirred during the Republican National Convention in New York, the president said in a speech in Nashville, Tennessee on Tuesday, August 31 “We meet today at a time of war for our country, a war we did not start, yet one that we will win."
No matter how he tries to sell it, Bush’s initial comments were right on the money, reflecting the intelligence briefings put before him day by day.
In “Al Qaeda Today, Centralized Strategic Decisions, Decentralized Operations”, (DEBKA-Net-Weekly 168, August 6) , examination of the terrorist network’s operational deployment revealed that its supreme leadership was losing direct control over target selection or the modalities of attacks decided by local branches, beyond general directives. The brutal school siege in Beslan, North Osettia, this week, was on example of a regional operation run by semi-autonomous regional or local affiliates over which the overall leadership has little control.
The school siege was masterminded by the Saudi wing of al Qaeda in Chechnya. Al Qaeda cells based in Iran are ****e to manipulation by Tehran for political and military ends that are foreign to the movement’s objectives. Al Qaeda is also found in league with Iran and the Lebanese Hizballah in attempting to grab footholds in South Lebanon and Gaza Strip.
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi sometimes acts out his own agenda in Iraq.
The first cracks are marring the once rock-smooth relations of unity and obedience binding the fundamentalist terror network’s various operational branches to the directives handed down by the top leaders.
This fragmentation of al Qaeda into ungovernable entities allied with outside forces, embedded in civilian populations and targeting other civilians, seriously hampers the efforts of counter-terror force to catch – let alone prevail over - all its widely-diffused fighting elements – certainly not by conventional military means.
Bush was therefore right when he said the war against terror cannot be won outright. But much can be done nonetheless by deploying large forces, including American troops, in many regions of the world to make them less hospitable to terrorists. As these regions multiply, the terrorists will find their areas of operation and freedom of movement increasingly cramped.
The spiral of terrorist outrages overtaking Russia, Iraq and Israel in the last 10 days reflects the increasing volatility of the fundamentalists’ organizational structure.
On Wednesday, August 25, the “Islambouli Brigades,” named after Egyptian President Anwar Sadat’s assassin, orchestrated the blowing up two hijacked Russian Tupolev planes that took off from Moscow minutes apart. Eighty-nine passengers and crew were killed.
Six days later, the same group sent a female suicide bomber to blow herself up outside a Moscow subway station, killing 10 people. Our Russian intelligence sources report the bomber was the sister of Chechen terrorist Amanty Nigayeva, who brought down one of the two Russian planes, a Tupolev 134, on a flight from Moscow to Volgograd.
A second Chechen woman blew up the other plane, a Tupolev 154 en route to the Black Sea resort of Sochi, where the Russian leader Vladimir Putin was on holiday.
Wednesday, September 1, an estimated 40 or 50 heavily armed terrorists, including women strapped in bomb belts, seized some 1,200 hostages - 700 children from 7 to 17 who were joined by their parents and teachers at Middle School No. 1, in the North Osettia town of Beslan, for a ceremony to open the Russian school year.
Friday, September 3, an unforeseen occurrence triggered an unplanned assault by Russian special troops on the school. They met fierce resistance from the hostage-takers. By Saturday, 430 dead hostages had been counted – 155 of them children - and the figure kept on rising. About 550 were injured, half children, some gravely. Twenty-seven hostage takers died, including 10 Arabs, three were taken alive and an unknown number escaped. Putin who visited Beslan and the hospital early Saturday, September 4, shut the borders of North Ossetia.
See Beslan School Siege Timeline in Special News Box under Headlines.
Shortly before Tuesday’s blast outside the Moscow station, Israel’s southern city of Beersheba suffered one of the deadliest suicide bombings seen since the Palestinian terror war was launched in September 2000. Two Hamas terrorists from Hebron detonated their bombs seconds apart on two buses packed with passengers returning home from the desert city’s main market, killing 16 people and wounding 102. Quick thinking by the driver of the second bus prevented an even worse disaster. When he saw the first bus explode, he pulled over to the verge and opened the doors for the passengers to tumble out, split seconds before the second suicide bomber pulled the wire.
No local investigators in either of these episodes made all the international connections. However, there were striking similarities between the methods of operation in two cases in the same time span: the two Beersheba bus blasts and the two Tupolev air crashes, both by suicide bombers.
On that same deadly Tuesday in August, an Iraqi terrorist group associated with Zarqawi, Ansar al-Sunna, murdered 12 Nepalese workers employed as cooks and cleaners by a Jordanian company. One victim was beheaded, the other 11 lined up and shot in the back.
According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s counter-terrorism sources, local al Qaeda cells had a hand in each of these three terrorist episodes, apparently unbeknownst to the organization’s central leadership.
The three attacks in Russia this month may be only the beginning, with more horrors to come. DEBKAfile’s counter-terror sources reveal that they were plotted and executed under the direction of the new chiefs of al Qaeda’s Saudi contingent commanding the Chechen rebel force who succeeded the late Abu al-Walid. Known only by their noms de guerre of “Abu Hafes” and “Abu Hajar”, they were ably assisted by two senior Iran-based operatives, Sayef al-Adel and Zarqawi.
Al-Adel is credited with setting up the large-scale terror attacks against Westerners’ housing compounds in Riyadh in May 2003. Zarqawi, in addition to his projects in Iraq, flits between Iran, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Chechnya.
The Islambouli Brigades, the group responsible for the suicide bombings aboard the Russian airliners, is the catchall of the Iranian-al Qaeda-Saudi-Chechen connection.
Mohammed Islambouli, the brother of Anwar Sadat’s killer, is a key al Qaeda player. He and Zarqawi asked the Saudi command in Chechnya to publicly dedicate an attack to the memory of the Egyptian president’s assassin. Every al Qaeda man dreams that one day, a “glorious operation” will bear his name or be dedicated to a family member.
The execution of the 12 Nepalese by Zarqawi’s men in Iraq was puzzling on the face of it. After all, Nepal has not sent troops to fight in Iraq. Why should its nationals be targeted by Islamic terrorists? Al Qaeda adherents who viewed the hideous atrocity on Al Jazeera television understood at once why they were slaughtered. One object was to disrupt the operation of the Jordanian firm employing them as carrier of the key supply line from the Red Sea port of Aqaba to US forces in Baghdad via Amman. Zarqawi’s detestation of his own country of birth, Jordan, was another motive.
But for al Qaeda, the Beersheba bus bombings were more important by far.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s intelligence sources report this operation fitted into the drive by a local al Qaeda cell in league with a Lebanon-based Iranian Revolutionary Guards detachment and the Hizballah, to carve out two interlinked terrorist enclaves on the Mediterranean shores of southern Lebanon and the Gaza Strip that will squeeze Israel from the north and south and provide all three with seaports for launching attacks elsewhere in the region.
Israeli officials have never admitted to the presence of al Qaeda cells in the Gaza Strip and West Bank, although in December 2001, two and a half months after al Qaeda struck New York and Washington, shoe bomber Richard Reid spent time in the Palestinian Jebalya camp as guest of Hamas leader Nabil Aqal. This is why the Hebron Kawasme cell held responsible for the two Beersheba bus blasts has presented merely as a local Hamas cell.
DEBKAfile’s counter-terror sources recall that exactly the same cell blew up a Haifa bus in March 2003. It then turned out to be linked to both Hizballah and al Qaeda.
DEBKAfile reported on March 6, 2003:
Fifteen Israelis – mostly high school pupils and Haifa university students – were murdered in a powerful blast generated by a Palestinian homicidal suicide while riding on a Haifa bus on Wednesday, March 5. The killer, a Palestinian aged 20 from the West Bank town of Hebron, was identified as Mahmoud Hamdan Selim Kawasme, member of a big Hebron clan and kinsman of a former mayor.
A note found on his body praised to heaven the al Qaeda perpetrators of the September 11 atrocities in New York, in which more than 3000 people died.
Initially he was described as a member of the Islamic extremist Hamas. DEBKAfile’s counter-terror sources say the young killer was in fact a disciple of Fawzi Ayoub, the high-ranking Lebanese Hizballah officer who infiltrated Israel as a Canadian tourist at the end of 2001and went to ground in Palestinian-controlled territory. Last July, he was picked up hiding in the rubble of the big Palestinian police headquarters building in Hebron, after it had been torn apart by the IDF, room by room, when the terrorists sheltering there refused to surrender.
Ayoub was one of a group of Hizballah instructors, expert in terrorist techniques, who were imported by Yasser Arafat under a secret pact he forged with Hizballah chief Hassan Nasrallah before launching his Intifada in September 2000. On orders from Arafat, the Palestinian West Bank Security head, Jibril Rajoub, made arrangements for keeping the group hidden. Ayoub trained dozens of young Palestinians as Hizballah, not Hamas, cadres in Hebron.
The high combat skills he imparted to these Palestinian terrorists were evident in the ambush on Worshippers’ Lane on the way to Hebron’s Cave of the Patriarchs carried out on November 16, 2002, in which 12 Israeli army and security officers and men lost their lives. DEBKAfile reported at the time that, although the assailants were identified as Jihad Islami, the attack bore the imprint of Fawzi Ayoub.
The note found on the body of Mahmoud Kawasme, protégé of a Hizballah officer, epitomizes the murky operational collaboration that DEBKAfile first exposed two years ago between Arafat’s Palestinian movement, the Lebanese Hizballah and al Qaeda.
End of article.
The Sharon government has an interest in keeping these dark connections shadowed for as long as possible. For if Israel is menaced not merely by Palestinian terror but by the immensely dangerous Hizballah and al Qaeda which are already burrowing underground to establish a stranglehold on the Gaza Strip, what point is there in going forward with any disengagement plans, much less the removal of the Israeli military presence from that increasingly strategic region? Israel’s peril from evacuated Palestinian territory may be extrapolated from Chechnya’s atrocity against the people of Beslan



Chaos Reigned In School
By Simon Ostrovsky and Nabi Abdullaev
STAFF WRITERS
BESLAN, North Ossetia - A bomb falling off a basketball hoop sparked the fierce battle at the Beslan school, and armed civilians hoping to save their loved ones helped sow chaos that cost the lives of hundreds of hostages.
Hostages concurred Monday that fighting only began after a heavy bomb fell off a basketball hoop in the gymnasium and detonated. The attackers had herded many of the about 1,100 hostages into the gym in the first minutes of the crisis and taped bombs to a line between two basketball hoops and the hoops themselves.
One hostage said the falling bomb hit the head of a teenage girl lying under a basketball hoop before it exploded.
At that very moment, four Emergency Situations Ministry officers were approaching the school under an arrangement with the attackers to pick up bodies that had been lying in the schoolyard since the crisis started.
Authorities said attackers standing guard at the windows opened fire, believing that the blast in the gymnasium and the approaching rescuers signaled the beginning of an operation to storm the school. Two rescuers were killed on the spot. As shell-shocked hostages started pouring out of the gym's shattered windows, the attackers started firing frantically at them.
Pandemonium then broke out. Special forces, local police and armed civilians responded by opening fire over the heads of the fleeing hostages.
The battle could have been prevented if civilians had obeyed orders to hold their fire, said former Ingush President Ruslan Aushev, who was in Beslan to negotiate the release of hostages.
The attackers told him by phone that they would stop shooting if the firing stopped, Aushev said in an interview published in Novaya Gazeta on Monday.
Servicemen forming a cordon around the school were ordered to stop firing, but the civilians continued shooting, he said.
Unsure of what would happen next, the attackers detonated their explosives in the school.
The grim result was at least 335 people dead - including 156 children - and more than 540 wounded, state-controlled Rossia television reported Monday, providing the latest update on Friday's toll. It said 192 people were buried Monday.
A total of 332 people remained hospitalized, including 202 children, the North Ossetian Health Ministry said.
About 200 people were missing, RIA-Novosti reported.
While accounts from hostages, soldiers and government officials support the version that the falling basketball bomb set off the battle, some North Ossetian law enforcement officials suggested that the explosion was deliberate and part of an escape plan by several of the attackers.
Citing local OMON officers, Kommersant reported Monday that the attackers planned to lure the rescuers into the school, kill them, put on their uniforms and attempt to flee by car.
This version is indirectly supported by reports in Izvestia on Monday that gunfire preceded the blast inside the school. Hostages have said that the attackers frequently fired their guns to intimidate them.
Deputy Prosecutor Sergei Fridinsky reiterated Monday that 32 attackers had seized the school and 30 of them had been killed. He said one attacker was in custody.
Izvestia said two attackers were lynched by the civilians - one as he attempted to escape and the other after being pulled out of a police car by the angry crowd.
The first attacker was killed by a local police officer during the seizure of the school Wednesday, Izvestia said.
Kommersant said Monday that from one to three hostage-takers might have escaped.
Fridinsky said that there were Chechens, Ingush, Tatars, Kazakhs and Koreans among the attackers. Earlier, the head of the North Ossetian branch of the Federal Security Service, Valery Andreyev, claimed that 10 of the attackers were Arabs, one of them black.
Aushev said the attackers during negotiations had refused to speak Vainakh, the language spoken both by the Ingush and Chechens, and used only Russian.
Aslanbek Aslakhanov, President Vladimir Putin's adviser on Chechnya who participated in negotiations, said they spoke in Russian with a Caucasus accent that was neither Ingush nor Chechen, Noviye Izvestia reported Monday.
Hostages said the attackers spoke Russian among themselves.
Authorities so far have established the identity of only one dead attacker, Ossetian criminal-turned-rebel Anatoly Khodov, 28. He was a suspect in two terrorist attacks in North Ossetia earlier this year, and his fingerprints were in the databases of the local police, Kommersant said.
Gazeta identified an attacker who was detained as Nur-Pashi Kulayev, 24, a native of the Chechen village of Stary Engenoi.
Three other attackers, including Kulayev's elder brother Khan-Pashi, also came from this village.
The Kulayevs are believed to be bodyguards and confidants of Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev, who has claimed responsibility for a number of terrorist attacks, including the hostage-taking raid on Moscow's Dubrovka Theater in October 2002.
Nur-Pashi Kulayev is actively cooperating with investigators in identifying other attackers, Channel One television reported.
A Kommersant reporter said he recognized Magomed Yevloyev, leader of the Ingush Wahhabi, among the bodies of the attackers lying in the schoolyard after Friday's battle.
Yevloyev is thought to have led raids in Ingushetia on June 21-22 that killed almost 90 people.
Kulayev said a Basayev bodyguard was among the attackers, a Slav known only as Fantomas, Kommersant reported.
He did not confirm the participation of Chechen warlord Doku Umarov, who was linked to the raid in earlier reports.
The attackers arrived at the school in a hijacked police truck. They took a police officer, Sultan Gurazhev, hostage on their way to Beslan and he later managed to escape, earlier news reports said. Kommersant said Monday that Gurazhev had been questioned by Beslan police and released.
Rebel web site Kavkazcenter.com reported Sunday about the federal security forces were arresting relatives of Chechen rebel leader Aslan Maskhadov. No Russian news media carried this information.
Meanwhile, Itar-Tass reported that in addition to a huge number of hostage deaths, the school crisis claimed a record number of officers in the elite Alfa and Vympel special forces. Ten officers died and 26 were wounded in Friday's battle, most of them as they tried to cover fleeing hostages with their bodies, the head of the veterans organization for special services, Eduard Bendersky, was quoted as saying.
More top stories:
Newspapers Blast Lies Of Leaders | Gathering of Thousands Spurns Terrorism | Shakirov Quits From Izvestia |
Something to say? Write to the Opinion Page Editor.
#1001, Tuesday, September 7, 2004
http://www.sptimes.ru/archive/times/1001/top/t_13483.htm

[anonymous individual]

For Russia's elite special forces, quiet burials

NIKOLSKO-ARKHANGELSKOE CEMETERY, Russia

They lived in secret. They knew that they could well die that way, too.

At least 11 of them - members of Russia's most elite special forces teams, the Alfa and Vympel units - died as they tried to rescue hundreds of hostages in the deadly climax to the attack at Middle School No. 1 in the southern town of Beslan. Some of them, their names withheld by the authorities, were buried over the past few days in a little-known section of this huge cemetery just outside Moscow.

But the precise circumstances of their deaths remain unexplained, fueling bitter questions about whether Russian government tactics may have cost lives. The questions also put an unaccustomed focus on some of the country's most covert military units in the aftermath of a horrific incident that resulted in the deaths of more than 300 hostages, about half of them children.

Alfa and Vympel are often compared to Delta Force, the elite U.S. Army commando unit, and Britain's fabled Special Air Service. Founded as units of the KGB, the Soviet Union's intelligence and internal security agency, Alfa and Vympel now operate under its successor, the FSB, and are thought to have 400 to 500 officers altogether.

Russia's first antiterrorism force, Alfa was established in 1974 by Yuri Andropov, then the chairman of the KGB. Vympel, which means banner, was started several years later, and lacks some of Alfa's clout and aura. Members of both units are specially selected from among FSB officers and undergo five years of intense training.

Now, like New York City police officers and firefighters after Sept. 11, 2001, these "spetznas," or special forces fighters, are national heroes, but their nation knows little about them.

"They died defending Russia's children," said Mikhail Odinokov, the manager of the cemetery, as he led a visitor to the manicured pine grove that is the private special forces cemetery, patrolled by the police and monitored by security cameras.

How did these men die? Odinokov paused and then said, "We can't give out that kind of information."

His colleague, a retired special forces officer, snorted. "Why can't we? They are heroes, like your firefighters in America. People should know who they are."

Both men fell silent.

The ages of the dead ranged from 21 to 36. And a few names carved into the dark gray granite gravestones were visible: Alexei Turkin, born 1975. Dmitri Razumovsky, born 1968. Date of death: Sept. 3, 2004. A day after the funerals, friends and colleagues came to lay flowers or to leave traditional funeral offerings, like a glass of vodka and a slice of bread, cigarettes and candles. Some wept, and waved off a reporter's requests for comment.

The Russian military operation at Beslan "was a disaster" on the order of those experienced by U.S. special forces in their "Black Hawk Down" battle in Somalia in 1993 and their failed attempt to free U.S. hostages in Iran a quarter-century ago, said Roger McDermott, a senior fellow and Eurasian military analyst at the University of Kent in England and a senior fellow of the Jamestown Foundation. But, he said, the men performed heroically.

"They were caught off guard, but largely trying to do their best trying to save these children's lives," he said.

Infuriated and grieving Russians want answers to many questions: Why did intelligence agencies fail to pick up on the hostage-takers' planning for the siege? How did the armed attackers make their way through checkpoints? Why were basic security measures not taken after the school was seized? Why was the final Russian military action so haphazard, and why did it result in so many deaths?

The official explanation, put forth by the Russian general prosecutor's office, is that an explosion in the school went off by accident and that as hostages began fleeing and their captors began shooting at them, the Alfa and Vympel forces stormed the building. According to this version, the commandos were then caught in cross-fire when residents of Beslan began firing toward the school from behind. One unidentified wounded special forces soldier, interviewed on Russian television, confirmed that after the blast, the two commando teams were caught between lines of fire - pinned down by the hostage-takers inside the building and fired on by local residents who began shooting at the hostage-takers.

Three Alfa and seven Vympel officers died in the fight, and another wounded commando died last week. At least 30 unit members were seriously wounded.

Some Russians have criticized the units for arriving too late. Newspapers have reported that the commandos did not have a map of the building, and that the police never established a cordon around the school to stop the attackers from fleeing.

Others offer a different critique. They suggest that the Kremlin, placing a premium on a show of force, had planned an assault all along, regardless of the potential loss of life. According to this theory, officials would justify their actions by saying that their decisions were prompted by an accident in the building - though, in this case, the hostages inside did say the fighting began when a explosion went off unexpectedly.

"The same thing happened during the Moscow theater siege," recalled Pavel Felgenhauer, an independent Russian military analyst, referring to an attack in October 2002 in which 129 hostages and 41 hostage-takers died. Almost immediately after the military stormed the building, he said, "the Kremlin put out a statement saying it had to be done because hostages were being shot."

"As it turned out later," he said, "that wasn't true."

But the special forces soldiers' scramble into the fray - in which many of them did not even have the time to don bulletproof vests - is ample refutation of this, Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Yermolin, the former head of operations of Vympel and now a member of Parliament, told Ekho Moskvy radio.

There are accounts that the Alfa unit was planning a more careful operation. Before the assault, Alfa's superiors at the FSB ordered the unit to prepare to storm the school with 30 men, said a photographer, Dmitri Belyakov, who was positioned with the unit for The Sunday Times of London the day of the siege. The commanders discussed tactics and options, Belyakov wrote.

"I never heard anyone question whether they were going to storm the building," he wrote. "The only question was when and how the assault should take place."

Even without a plan, some analysts contended, the Alfa and Vympel forces did save some children and might have helped the government to save face. "They saved Russia's reputation when they rushed into battle without a plan and without any bulletproof jackets - in effect, contrary to their own professional training," Yulia Latynina, an independent political commentator, wrote in the newspaper Novaya Gazeta.



OPINION


Heroism and Monstrous Incompetence
By Yulia Latynina
The Federal Security Service, or FSB, has taken power in Russia. A former intelligence officer runs the country. A former intelligence officer runs the Defense Ministry. A former intelligence officer runs the Interior Ministry. According to various estimates, siloviki make up 70 to 80 percent of the new Russian establishment.
The primary function of the security services is to neutralize threats to national security - in other words, to prevent terrorist attacks. The security services are failing miserably in this task.
I know they're busy. They're carving up Yukos and going into business. They're defending Russia's interests in South Ossetia. But surely they could think a little less about South Ossetia, which is part of Georgia, and a little more about Russian North Ossetia, where Beslan is located.
The terrorists' demands were on President Vladimir Putin's desk inside of 10 minutes. Yet the state media reported that the terrorists had made no demands. The terrorists perceived this as a death sentence. If their demands weren't even being reported, negotiations were not on the cards.
The terrorists were willing to negotiate with Ingush President Murat Zyazikov - also a chekist. Zyazikov switched off his mobile phone and disappeared. A spokesman said he was in Spain. Instead, former Ingush President Ruslan Aushev turned up uninvited. He contacted the terrorists by phone and told them he was coming in. Soon after, he emerged with 26 women and infants. Doesn't this indicate that negotiations were a viable option?
Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev and FSB director Nikolai Patrushev arrived in North Ossetia five hours after the siege began. No one knows what they did there. We do know that they didn't negotiate with the terrorists, thereby breaking the most basic rule of handling hostage situations: Negotiate, not to fulfill their demands, but to create the illusion that a peaceful resolution is close at hand. Everyone wants to live, even suicide bombers. The monstrous incompetence of these men resulted in the most deaths in the history of terrorism in Russia. Neither has offered to resign.
In a certain newspaper office I was shown a remarkable document. A major oligarchic organization was offering to pay for articles about the tragedy. The oligarchs wanted to put statements like the following into print: "All of those who took part in these tragic events are heroes. Russia hasn't witnessed heroism like this in a long time. For years the politicians have accused them of the seven deadly sins, calling them 'werewolves in epaulets.' But these men did not break; they did not fall."
They're all heroes, you see? The officers in the elite Alfa and Vympel special forces units who were working out a plan for storming the school when the shooting started, then rushed in without body armor, shielding the hostages with their bodies. And Nurgaliyev and Patrushev, who couldn't seal off the school or move the armed gawkers and local cops out of the way. And anyone who says differently is an accomplice in terror.
Yulia Latynina hosts a political talk show on Ekho Moskvy radio.
More opinion stories:
Asking for Death Penalty Is Risking Your Own Neck |
Something to say? Write to the Opinion Page Editor.
#1002, Friday, September 10, 2004
http://www.sptimes.ru/archive/times/1002/opinion/o_13502.htm
[/code]

[anonymous individual]

CNN:Putin Blasts U.S. on Terror Stance

From CNN Moscow Bureau Chief Jill Dougherty
Tuesday, September 7, 2004 Posted: 2:48 AM EDT (0648 GMT)

MOSCOW, Russia (CNN) -- Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that mid-level officials in the U.S. government were undermining his country's war on terrorism by supporting Chechen separatists, whom he compared to al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

Putin's charge, made in a meeting with a group of western foreign policy experts, came just days after hundreds of people, mostly children, died in the bloody end to the Beslan siege.

Putin also defended his government's decision to storm the school and said the hostage holders had begun shooting children out of boredom.

His comments did not suggest the final raid was triggered by the shooting of children.

In the wide-ranging meeting which lasted almost four hours, Putin said he likes President Bush, calling him a friendly, decent, predictable person.

But Putin said each time Russia complained to the Bush administration about meetings held between U.S. officials and Chechen separatist representatives, the U.S. response has been "we'll get back to you" or "we reserve the right to talk with anyone we want."

Putin blamed what he called a "Cold War mentality" on the part of some U.S. officials, but likened their demands that Russia negotiate with the Chechen separatists to the U.S. talking to al Qaeda.

These are not "freedom fighters," Putin said. "Would you talk with Osama Bin Laden?" he asked.

Putin said the Chechen separatists are trying to ignite ethnic tensions in the former Soviet Union and it could have severe repercussions.

"Osama Bin Laden attacked the United States saying he was doing it because of policies in the Middle East," Putin said. "Do you call him a freedom fighter?"

Putin's comments came a few weeks after the U.S. granted asylum to Ilias Akhmadov, the "foreign minister" of the Chechen separatist movement.

The Russian president also justified the rescue operation in Beslan, conceding that it took time to mobilize the operation.

He said Russian special forces stormed the school knowing they themselves were likely to be killed.

In one dramatic moment, Putin said Russian security forces overheard a disturbing walkie-talkie conversation between the terrorists:

"What are you doing? Why? I hear some noise. What's going on? I'm just in the middle of shooting some children."

"They were bored," Putin said. "So they shot children."

Putin said investigators determined the hostage takers included 10 fighters from "Arab" countries, along with others from the former Soviet Union and one person from North Ossetia where the hostage crisis unfolded.

Putin said the terrorists' goal was to ignite conflict between two local ethnic groups, the Ingush and the Ossetians.

In other comments, Putin said Russia would take its own approach to democratic reform.

"We'll do this at our own pace," he said. Democracy can mean different things in different countries, he said.

"In Russia, democracy is who shouts the loudest," he said. "In the U.S., it's who has the most money."


Putin declared two days of mourning for those who died in Beslan.
Asked about the U.S. presidential race, Putin was complimentary of President George W. Bush, saying he likes him. He is a friendly, decent, predictable person, but "it is not about personalities," Putin said.

He said polls in Russia show 7 percent support for Bush, and 25 percent for Democratic challenger John Kerry.

http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/europe/09/07/putin.us/index.html



Reprisal Fears as Russia Death School Mourns


1 hour, 3 minutes ago
Top Stories - *******


By Sonia Oxley
BESLAN, Russia (*******) - The people of Beslan marked the end of a 40-day mourning period on Tuesday, turning the Russian school where their children were killed into a shrine with gifts and flowers, as many warned of reprisals.

******* Photo



AP Photo


Slideshow: Russian School Terror Attack




Hundreds flocked to pay homage at School No. 1 in the Caucasus town near Chechnya (news - web sites), that became the scene of a bloodbath last month after being seized by armed separatists.
More than 330 people, half of them children, died on Sept. 3 in the world's worst hostage disaster when a two-day siege by Russian security forces ended in bomb blasts and shooting.
The gymnasium, where more than 1,000 parents, teachers and children were held captive and where many victims died, was the centerpiece for Tuesday's memorial services.
Its walls still blackened and its roof still open to the sky from a series of deadly explosions, the gymnasium was packed with row on row of flowers, written notes from Russia and across the world, cuddly toys and photographs.
Mourners conspicuously placed open boxes of chocolates and opened bottles of soft drinks -- a poignant gesture to recall how their children's captors had denied them food and water.
Larissa Sukhoyeva, whose 12-year-old daughter died in hospital from her wounds, said she had been unable to weep for her child because she had been recovering from a lung injury.
Pointing to where she had sat with her daughter when the bloody climax came, she said: "The question is 'why did no one rescue us?' There were not just 300 of us. There were 1,200."
Anger against neighboring Ingush and Chechens is widespread since many of the hostage-takers were from these two groups. Local leaders have expressed fears that with the Russian Orthodox 40-day mourning over there could be violent reprisals.
Russian President Vladimir Putin (news - web sites) says the Beslan operation, carried out by Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev's fighters, was aimed at exploding the fragile ethnic balance in the seething Caucasus and setting rival groups at each other's throats.
Ossetians are the dominant ethnic group in the province where Beslan is situated and have a long-standing grudge with the Ingush with whom they clashed in the early 1990s.
REPRISAL FEARS
"I do not think those who are guilty will be punished. There will be lynch-law. War will begin," said one man, who did not wish to be identified, in Beslan.
Other local figures publicly urged people to be calm.
"The aim of this terrorist attack was to incite ethnic conflict. If there is a war between the Ingush and the Ossetians, the terrorists will have won," said Sufiyan Beppaev who heads a regional council dedicated to smoothing out inter- ethnic problems.
Some victims, including children, are still being buried after a long and complicated process of identification.
In Ingushetia, across the border from Ossetia, local sources say tension is high in expectation of an armed attack and say daily travel to and from Ossetia has almost ceased.

A sense of bitterness ran deep among mourners in Beslan.
Falissa who lost a sister, a grand-daughter and a niece, said: "Putin should have held talks. He should resign.
"Why have I lost my whole family? I don't know which of those I have lost to mourn most," she said.


Don't know if these are what you're looking for. But I have more.

[)I(EHbKA.]

today I read in the news that those survivors that are present at the only live terrorist's trial blame the securtity forces for the deaths of their relatives, friends not the terrorists, they say the storm should have began right after the school taking, that's prerry f*** up, blaming people that that risled their lives as opposed to terrorists, I guess it's the caucasian syndrome

That's sad, misdirected anger. Similar to that of the Iraqis who blame US soldiers for suicide bombings.

Although there have been questions about the tactics used, I simply don't know enough about what went on. Which is why, I assume, the creator of this thread asked for such info.

A note to certain posters... Please, post FACT not PROPOGANDA.

in a way they are right but only to an extent, if the US didn't invade Iraq the suicide bombings wouldn't exist right now, as for Beslan I wasn't there neither was anyone else that is here so it's hard to speculate, maybe it's the fear that this will happen again that makes people take the terrorists' side

[mudbunny]

I'd like to get some more but the ones you posted were very good, thank you. The piece that PBS did on this tragedy was very well done with interviews with several of the adults in the gym, the one thing that struck me when I watched it was that civilians were armed and stationed themselves outside, I just thought that this was a recipe for disaster and I was confused as to why the military that arrived on scene didn't confiscate these peoples weapons and that they were undermining the negotiations. Unfortunatly, according to the article, that sounds like what happened.

[Azide]

I'd like to get some more but the ones you posted were very good, thank you. The piece that PBS did on this tragedy was very well done with interviews with several of the adults in the gym, the one thing that struck me when I watched it was that civilians were armed and stationed themselves outside, I just thought that this was a recipe for disaster and I was confused as to why the military that arrived on scene didn't confiscate these peoples weapons and that they were undermining the negotiations. Unfortunatly, according to the article, that sounds like what happened.

Yep, this is probably the one thing that ****ed every thing up.

From what I understand,the civis opened fire right after the explosives accidentaly went off, kick starting the assult with the Alfa team nowhere in sight.

[stuntman]

I'd like to get some more but the ones you posted were very good, thank you. The piece that PBS did on this tragedy was very well done with interviews with several of the adults in the gym, the one thing that struck me when I watched it was that civilians were armed and stationed themselves outside, I just thought that this was a recipe for disaster and I was confused as to why the military that arrived on scene didn't confiscate these peoples weapons and that they were undermining the negotiations. Unfortunatly, according to the article, that sounds like what happened.

Yep, this is probably the one thing that f*** every thing up.

From what I understand,the civis opened fire right after the explosives accidentaly went off, kick starting the assult with the Alfa team nowhere in sight.

I agree but if I had a child (I don't) in a school held hostaged you better believe I will have a hand gun in my jacket. Because if they were to kill my loved one there is noway in hell I could of imagine myself to remain sane in a situation like that. So lets give those poor Russian parents a little bit of sympathy. Then again I trust my ESU team (NYC) better then some hard charging military unit like the one that assualted.

[ßå$tĮТHÏ¿ð]

Use the search fature on this site, it'll do wonders.