Beslan 5 months on

An interview with Aleksandr Torshin, head of the Beslan Commission, whose work has now dragged on for five months and still shows no sign of yielding definitive results, throws up some details and speculations, though Torshin's words need to be filtered through the official murk that surrounds them - and they may, in fact, have the purpose of intensifying the murk still further :

Now, who provoked the storming of the school building? The fact is that the storming operation was launched after two explosions were heard there. What were those explosions? Who set them off?

I am becoming more and more certain that they were triggered because the negotiating process had begun. A few days ago, we questioned Aslakhanov (an aide to the RF president. - Ed.), who had been flying to Beslan for direct negotiations with the terrorists. The explosions came the moment his plane landed. I suppose that neither the bandits nor the FSB benefited from the explosions in any way. But someone was interested in them - there is no question about that. We believe that these were certain individuals who were closely watching the course of the Beslan events and did everything to thwart the negotiations. They wanted bloodshed.

What other questions have yet to be answered?

These are questions that hostage victims are putting to us. We look for answers and often find them. These answers, however, are not of much importance for the commission's findings. For instance, people of Beslan insist: The weapons had been brought to the school before the attack, while the commission is hiding the fact. We are hiding nothing! We simply have no evidence to go on. Consider that there were more than 1,200 hostages at the school, and only one 11-year old boy purportedly saw weapons being pulled from under the debris of a smashed wall. What about the others? Give us adults who will say: Yes, we saw it. Give us evidence, give us proof.

What about the reports that Shmel rocket flame-throwers were used in the storming operation - do you have any evidence of this now? The citizens of Beslan are convinced that Spetsnaz officers fired flame-throwers at the school building, starting a fire, thus causing a burning roof to collapse on the hostages.

This is a very difficult question. Yes, on the third day of our work in Beslan, a commission member climbed the roof of a building abutting the school and found several Shmel tubes. Officials from the military prosecutor's office were called in to the scene. A report was filed. The Shmel serial numbers were recorded. This is now a subject of a separate investigation. The problem, however, is that the procedure for inventorying and storaging these weapons is extremely lax so they may never be traced. We are currently searching military depots for any missing Shmels, but so far there have been no results.

What other things have yet to be cleared up?

We would like to know who ordered and masterminded the Beslan attack. Although there were no organizers or masterminds among them, the executants are known; at least 10 gunmen were top-notch professionals. After all, we have never sustained such heavy losses before: 10 Spetsnaz and two Emergency Situations Ministry (MChS) officers were killed. It is more or less clear who the organizers were, but we have no clue about the masterminds themselves.

Do you have a theory?

We have no theory. But here is what I think. Imagine that Dzasokhov (president of North Ossetia. - Ed.), Zyazikov (president of Ingushetia. - Ed.), Aslakhanov, and Dr. Roshal arrive at the school, as the terrorists demand, and all four are killed. What would have happened next? Early elections would have been called in North Ossetia and Ingushetia. Who would have won those elections? I don't know the names, but these would have been hard-line nationalists, at least in North Ossetia. They would have been obsessed with taking revenge on their neighbors. We would have been thrown back to the 1992 situation. Had the Ossetian-Ingush conflict resumed, Chechens would take the Ingush side. I am being urged to disclose the gunmen's ethnicity. This I won't do because I understand that some people would like to finger an enemy and provoke an interethnic conflict.