Zakayev: Beslan hostages could have been saved

Chechenpress, Department of official information, 04.09.05

At the end of three days of mourning, on the first anniversary of the tragedy in Beslan, in our memories we again live through those events and try to understand if everything had been done in order to prevent the mass death of innocent people. In this connection I want to recall and again to testify that President Aslan Maskhadov - who I contacted on request of Aleksandr Dzasokhov and Ruslan Aushev - was ready, relying on his authority, to immediately interfere with the situation, in order to solve this serious crisis and to attain the release of all the hostages.

Specifically, on 3 September, when an oral understanding had been achieved with the government of North Ossetia that President Maskhadov would go to Beslan under guarantees for his safety, the most terrible followed, which we had all feared: Putin, who was interested in extracting maximal political and propagandistic benefits from this situation, gave the order to storm. Under this criminal order, Russian storm troops opened massive fire on the school from all kinds of weapons, including tanks and flamethrowers. And hundreds of Beslan citizens, including children, died by the hands of Russian terrorists.

We ask: Was there a possibility to save the lives of the hostages? And we answer: Absolutely, yes! However, Putin made his choice: Not wanting to see the Chechen President in the role of rescuer of the hostages, he preferred to become their killer. And from now on, no propagandistic tricks and pocket "commissions" will allow him to avoid the responsibility, to wash off himself the blood of hundreds of inhabitants of Beslan.

Today the relatives of the victims, and especially the courageous "mothers of Beslan", who didn't surrender to bribes or intimidation, are showing the President of the RF, Putin, as what he actually is - the killer of their children. I would like to note that the leadership of the ChRI is prepared to contribute in all possible ways to an objective international investigation of the Beslan tragedy and to accept its conclusions.

The grief of the parents who lost their children is immeasurable. Who would know it better than the Chechens, who have been in the centre of a genocidal war already for 11 years and lost 250,000 of their compatriots, including more than 40,000 children, by the hands of the Kremlin terrorists! On this sorrowful anniversary I again wish to send my sincere condolences to the people of Beslan and the whole North Ossetian people.

Vice-premier of the Chechen Government, Ahmed Zakayev

http://www.chechenpress.info/events/2005/09/04/05.shtml

(translation by N.S.)