Medvedev promises to look into Beslan massacre again

“No administrative or legal measures have been taken” after the deadly terror act in Beslan in September 2004, President Dmitry Medvedev acknowledged during a meeting with representatives of the Mothers of Beslan Committee in Moscow.

There were two main issues on the agenda, an objective investigation of the school siege which left 330 dead, including 186 children, and more than 800 injured, as well as social adaptation of its victims and preparing a law on the status of terror acts victims. Mothers of Beslan was set up in February 2005 and brings together mothers and other relatives of those killed and injured during the three-day siege in the North Ossetian town. According to the press secretary of the presidential plenipotentiary in North Ossetia, Irbek Doev, the meeting with two representatives of the committee, Susanna Dudieva and Elvira Tuaeva lasted two hours. They handed to the president a formal letter in which they ask to “punish those responsible for the terrorist act.”“He believes that it is necessary to reconsider investigation materials attentively and that it can settle a number of issues,” Susanna Dudieva told Kommersant daily. The investigation into the Beslan siege is still underway but, according to Mothers of Beslan, there has not been much progress in it. Dudieva and Tuaeva told Kommersant that investigators have initiated no criminal or administrative cases, except for the trial of the Chechen militant Nurpashi Kulaev, the only surviving participant of the terror attack, and two local police officials, who were later granted amnesty. Susanna Dudieva and Elvira Tuaeva also note that after a terror act in Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport this January, officials responsible for failing security were brought to account. They say they want the same measures for those who let the Beslan tragedy happen. “I think the meeting was a success. We learnt the president’s point of view,” Interfax quoted Dudieva. “And the president seems to have heard ours.”