Beslan: "As Hot As In Hell"

"In the gymnasium it had become as hot as in hell"

//Beslan hostages assert that they were fired at from
flamethrowers//

Trial of Kulayev

http://www.kommersant.ru/doc.html?DocID=598138&IssueId=23472

[passage omitted]

Zemfira Agayeva described how the fighters were rounding up people into the gymnasuim, shouting that those were not to be afraid, "that we here, so the troops from Chechnya would be withdrawn". The victim told also about the beginning of the assault:

- Practically immediately, as the first explosion was heard, from the side of courtyard some unbearable whistle was heard, and again something exploded, only it was much stronger. In a few minutes in the gymnasium became hot as in hell, I even thought that I'm on fire.

Those flamethrowers were being shot, although Shepel (Nikolai Shepel, deputy prosecutor of Russia. - L) assures that the flamethrowers couldn't cause any fire. If he were here, I would want to ask him a question.

Zemfira Agayeva described how when leaving the school she noticed "people at the front - in the bulletproof vests and with the automatic submachine guns standing quite far from the school, and the hostages were being saved by the locals, as there are now called them, the [people's] militiamen (opolchentsy), and if not them, then even more of us would perish". Victim Marina Pak tried to present a question to Zamfira Agayeva, presumably , about the use of flamethrowers; however, Judge Aguzarov interrupted her. Mrs. Pak didn't stop, after stating that, "if we've been trying Kulayev, why we listen to those, who didn't see Kulayev in the school"; however, this argument did not work. Then the judge threatened to remove the woman from the courtroom, and passions calmed down a little bit. True, not for long.

- Tell us Nurpashi, do they inject you with anything before these court sessions? - Agayeva asked the defendant .

- This question is removed, sharply interupted her Tamerlan Aguzarov. - It does not relate to the case.

- How it does not relate, the victim got sincerely astonished. - He always says one and the same - about a number of fighters and about the fact that there were no flamethrowers...

But she did not get an anwer in this question.

Aleta Gadiyeva described how on the third day "we waited, that everything will end, we wanted just simply to die, that everything would explode". When the assault began, the hostage with her two daughters crawled up to a window in order to get out into the schoolyard.

- There, under the window, a man was laying, recalled Mrs. Gadiyeva. - He saw what I wanted to do and he yelled not throw the children out in any circumstances. He said that the fighters shoot them in the back. Then we went to other side, to the cafeteria. There were already many people there. Khodov (one of the leaders of terrorists. - K) began to shout to take the children as shields and put them at the windows. We begged him to put the adults there, but he answered: "I said - the children!"

Zaur Farniyev for K., Vladikavkaz

(tr. M.L., via chechnya-sl)