transcripts inc. witnessess, VERY GOOD

http://hotzone.yahoo.com/b/hotzone/blogs2834
Rights Abuses in Chechnya: Interview Transcript
By Robert Padavick, Mon Mar 6, 5:28 PM ET
Katarina Sokirianskaia is a case worker for Memorial, a Russian human rights organization that monitors kidnappings and abuse in the northern Caucases. Memorial says it has evidence that Russian forces and Chechen security forces allied to Russia have been involved in 3,000 kidnappings in the region since 1999.
Kevin Sites asked Sokirianskaia about Memorial's work in Chechnya and the group's call for Russia to combat terror while maintaining human rights. You can watch highlights of the video interview or read the following partial transcript.
-Hot Zone senior producer Robert Padavick

KATARINA SOKIRIANSKAIA: We have so far registered about 3,000 cases of kidnappings. And this, keeping in mind that we only monitor 25-30% of the Chechen territory — so the figures are probably much higher.
KEVIN SITES: Now, what's the motivation behind these abductions?

SOKIRIANSKAIA: The motivation is to suppress or defeat the forces which are opposing the Federal army in Chechnya, number one. Number two is to control the society by penetrating it with this kind of fear. Those who have the will to resist, they are eliminated. The others are simply threatened this way.

SITES: There is a legitimate separatist movement within Chechnya, but there is also definitely terrorism. [Chechen guerilla leader Shamil] Basayev and the Beslan school massacre was an example of horrific violence perpetrated on innocents. And in some cases, combating that kind of terrorism will take very strong tactics. Would you agree with that, or is that something that is outside of your view here?

SOKIRIANSKAIA: After this terrible crime in Beslan — I am an eyewitness to Beslan, I was near the Beslan school when the storming took place, and this is the worst thing I have ever seen in my life — I definitely agree that these types of things require the most serious response.

After this happened in Beslan, [Russian] President [Vladimir] Putin was on TV and he declared that Russia was under attack — international terror. In this way he's kind of projected the aggression of people, the fear, to this blurred international actor. But in fact, the problem is that terrorism in Russia is homegrown; it is domestic. And it is rooted in the war in Chechnya — with protracted, unresolved conflict in Chechnya.

I believe that even such terrible crimes, they have to be combated within the frame of the law. Otherwise, violence reproduces violence, and you have people like Basayev taking schools. Because [Russian forces] produce terror by kidnapping people, by torturing people, by fabricating criminal cases against them.

If you have a young man whose brother or two brothers were kidnapped, and they're missing without a trace, and if he himself went through a terrible experience with torture ... no wonder that he might join combatant groups or radical groups. Actually you can see how the separatist movement has radicalized in the last 10 years. It has developed a very strong, terrorist, radical wing. And I think this is the result of failed policy in Chechnya.

SITES: How do security forces combat this particular type of terrorism, which is mixed in with a nationalist separatist movement, in an effective way — without violating civil or human rights?

SOKIRIANSKAIA: Well it is my understanding — I don't have a remedy for all cases, I know about cases I work on — I think the Russian government has to negotiate with the separatist movement. It's a political conflict, it was possible to negotiate and it still is. They have to strike a deal with the separatists.

[The separatists] have already declared that they basically would agree to some kind of scheme of Chechnya remaining part of the Russian state, but in a way they see it. And then, join efforts to get rid of the terrorists. If the separatists can influence the terrorists in one way or another, this only makes them better partners for negotiation. Because by striking a deal with them, you get rid of the terrorist problem.
I think if we observe the law, we stop reproducing terrorists. We cut them off the social basis. Because they employ the local grievances — they employ the dissatisfaction of people.


The following transcript is from the 48 minute-53-second Djigit Gulam-produced video (June 15, 2006) titled “Dispatches Beslan”, with subtitles in Russian and voiceover in English, and subtitles in English when interviewees speak Russian. (1-2) This video of the Beslan catastrophe contains actual footage shot by the terrorists inside the gym and by townspeople and camera operators monitoring the situation from outside of the school. The footage tells the story of the massacre as it unfolded September 1-3, 2004, through interviews with survivors and officials. The photos below are digital stills of certain frames in the video. Some 24,000 people worldwide have viewed this video since its release, according to the website. The video is downloadable to a computer’s hard drive and to Video iPod/Sony PSP. M. O’Leary transcribed the video on November 25, 2007.
For background about the lead-up to the Beslan school massacre catastrophe, see
SEMP Biot Report #479: “Chechnya: Chaos of Human Geography in the North Caucasus, 484 BC-1957 AD” (November 18, 2007) at http://www.semp.us/publications/biot_reader.php?Bi...; and
SEMP Biot Report #480: “Crescendo to Beslan School Massacre, 1953-2004AD in Chechnya” (November 21, 2007) at http://www.semp.us/publications/biot_reader.php?Bi....
I. Part One: Introduction
Interrogator: “You know your rights under the Russian Federation constitution?”
Terrorist: “Yes.”
Interrogator: “Were you under any physical or psychological pressure?”
Terrorist: “Nobody forced me.”
Interrogator: “Kulaev, can you tell me when you met up with the gang?”
British commentator: “On the right, the interrogator, on the left, the accused, his name Natasha Kulaev, the only known terrorist to survive the raid on Number 1 school in Beslan.”
Interrogator: “When did you get to the school at Beslan?”
Kulaev: “September 1.”
(Switch to boy, Azamat Totiev, playing accordion)
British commentator: “A school concert several weeks before the terrorist attack. Azamat Totiev is 12 years old. He comes from a big family. And when the new school year starts in Beslan on the first day of September, he’ll be there with his sisters and the cousins who live next door.”
(Switch to grassy fields and dirt roads)
British commentator: “The borderlands of Ingushia and Ossetia, two Russian republics close to Chechnya. These are the roads heavily armed terrorists chose early in the morning as they reached out in the mist to bring Chechnya’s war to school.”
(Switch to children on their ways to school and chatting in schoolyard with parents, family, and school staff.)
British commentator: “September 1. All over Russia, families gather for the Festival of Knowledge celebrating young children’s first day at school. These pictures show how it should be. This is how it had been in Beslan the year before, and all the years before that.”
Teacher 1: “Welcome, dear parents and everyone here who has come to share with us this Day of Knowledge festival. Behind us is the hot summer. Behind us is leisure and vacation. Ahead of us is the new school year, full of new challenges, new joys and new hope.”
Teacher 2: “I’m as anxious as you, dear parents and as excited as the children.”
Teacher 3: “Our task is to make sure that during term or holiday, no child ever comes home in tears having been made upset at school.”
(Switch to teacher and mother, survivor Julietta Gutieva.)
Julietta Gutieva (teacher and mother): “Everything is new, of course. New schoolbags, homework diaries, exercise books, pens.”
(Switch back to schoolyard.)
Boy child: “Now we’re here, we’ll wait no more, Open up the school doors. We hope you give us very soon, reading books of many colours.”
Boy child: “Hello, pens, pencils and books! We can’t wait for what’s in store. Goodbye to all our childish toys. We’re not little any more.”
Girl child: “In our brand new bags, we have brand new books. So we say Hello to school. Goodbye to kindergarten.”
Teacher: “This key to the Land of Knowledge will now be presented to a pupil of the first form.”
(Switch back to Julietta Gutieva)
Julietta Gutieva (teacher and mother): “To be honest, I didn’t even realise what was happening. The music was playing. The children were laughing, we were all chatting. We didn’t even notice that we were surrounded.”

British commentator: “In recent times terrorism has become a kind of theatre. It demands spectacle. It demands an audience. It demands sacrifices. In 1995, Chechen terrorists seized a hospital. One hundred and fifty hostages died when troops stormed the building. The terrorists were commanded by Shamil Basayev. In 2002 Basayev’s men took 900 people hostage at a Moscow theater. This time 129 hostages lost their lives. And once again government troops stormed the building. For three days at the beginning of September Beslan was the stage for another cruel blood performance. Trapped inside the school were over 1200 people, mostly women and children, some no more than babies. Their only hope of survival was that somehow someone would strike a bargain between the ruthless men who had seized them and an uncompromising Russian state.”

II. Part Two: September 2, 2004, Day One of Siege
(Morning, September 1, 2004, day 1 of siege. Sirens wailing, armed townspeople moving en masse toward the school. One man is restrained by others saying, “No!, It’s too dangerous”.)
British commentator: “It is just 9:30 [a.m.], moments after the terrorists had seized the school.”
Townsperson: “Fucking hell!”
Larisa Kudzieva (mother): “They herded us into classrooms and held us for a while. It was total chaos. Women were screaming and crying, looking for their children. We realized at once that something terrible had happened. They took us from the classroom to the corridor and then the gym. They began hanging explosives in the gym like Christmas baubles. They were stuffing them into the basketball hoops and so on. We were sitting very close to one of the hoops. They also hung explosives on the wall-bars. There were wires in the passageways and all round the perimeter” [of the gym].”
Someone speaking into a camcorder viewing the inside the gym: “The explosives were in the gym where most of the people were held. Three terrorists controlled the so-called ‘keys’.”
British commentator: “The interrogators of the surviving terrorist have pieced together the scene that morning. One terrorist controlled this chain [of explosives], another controlled this chain [of explosives] and a third controlled this one” [pointing to a map of the gym]. “A fourth was in the 1st floor corridor and out of reach of the others. He controlled the whole chain. Only the bastard on the 1st floor could blow the lot.”
Elena Kasumova, deputy headmistress: “From the start, we knew that it wasn’t a joke, when one parent was shot before our eyes. He was trying to calm us and a terrorist jumped up and shot him. I turned and saw a man lying there, white as a sheet. For two hours, he lay there in front of us all. In front of his own sons.”
Zarina Dzampaeva (mother): “When we were in the hall, two women suicide bombers took up position, one at each end of the gym. They told us at the very start: ‘We have come here to die. Because that’s how our children are dying. If Putin takes pity on you, if he or anyone needs you at all, then you will be released.”
(Switch to armed townspeople outside of the school, some men swinging rifles.)
Man in white shirt: “Get away!”
Townswoman 1: “Women, too?”
Townswoman 2: “Yes, in masks”.
Townswoman 3 (talking on cell phone): “They grabbed everyone and shoved them into the gym. I don’t know Angela, I don’t know what’s going to happen.”
Larisa Kudzieva (mother): “There was a pool of blood from the man wounded near me. We tried to stop the bleeding somehow, but we failed. My skirt was all soaked with his blood. I never knew that blood could be so heavy. I was yelling for bandages, saying we had a wounded man. I must have got on their nerves. One of them said, ‘You think you’re the bravest here. Get on your knees!’ Either from fear or I don’t know what, I thought: ‘Shit, what is going on here’. I could see through his mask. He hadn’t shaved for about three days. He had ginger hair and freckles. And I thought ‘What’s going on here?’ I pushed the barrel of his weapon away from my face and I said: “Do you want a performance here? In front of all these terrified women? In front of my children?”
British commentator: “Mid morning, local men exchanged fire with terrorists. From inside the school they sent a warning: ‘Kill one of us, we kill fifty. Kill five of us and we blow up everything’. With this warning all shooting from the outside stopped. The fathers and neighbors who had rushed to the school knew that the fate of their loved ones was out of their hands. The terrorists named the four men they wanted to talk to. At 2 o’clock Aslambek Aslakhanov, President Putin’s advisor on the North Caucasus, called the school from Moscow.
(Switch to Putin’s advisor behind a desk.)
Putin’s advisor Aslambek Aslakhanov: “I said, ‘I’m prepared to come. We have matters for discussion. Are you ready to talk?’ The terrorist exploded. He said ‘Why are you lying? We have over 1,200 people here, 70% of whom are children. Some people are dead already and you talk of ‘matters for discussion? If you carry on like this, we’ll start shooting and throwing out bodies. Then you’ll see it’s serious.’”
(Switch to Larisa Kudzieva.)
Larisa Kudzieva (mother): “They looked around and picked out ten men, the most heavily built ones. They lined them up and took them out. A bit later, they picked a further 15 well-built men. Maybe they were afraid that they might put up some resistance. It wasn’t clear where they were being taken, but we heard shooting. At the time, we didn’t know their fate. [They were executed and thrown out a window into a heap of bodies, as promised by the terrorists.]”
British commentator: “The terrorists had made their intentions clear. This wasn’t just a performance for the women and children, or for the people of Beslan. This was a performance staged for Moscow. And now the terrorists waited to see how Moscow would respond”.

III. Part Three, September 2, 1995, Day Two of Siege
(Morning, September 2, 1995, day 2 of siege, crowd of townspeople outside of school.)
Government spokesman (addressing crowd): “We have no clear information as to the contents or the demands”.
Townswoman on cell phone: “They say that just counting children, there are 400.”
Government spokesman: “We’ve been compiling lists, and the figure stands at 354 hostages.”
British commentator: Inside the school, the terrorists watched the government spokesman on TV. They knew they had 1200 hostages. Moscow was toying with them. The terrorists retaliated. They stopped giving their captives water”.
(Switch to Julietta Gutieva.)
Julietta Gutieva (teacher and mother): “On the second day, we began to have doubts. I found my friend Albina Tebieva. She was there with her two boys. I asked her, ‘How are you coping, without water?’ She answered, ‘How well can we be coping?’ My boy pissed and drank it from the bottle in one gulp. Can you imagine it? Our children drank urine”.
(Switch to living room of two young survivors, Tata and Inna, on couch.)
Female interviewer in background, to Tata: “Did you see any teachers cry?”
Tata: “No.”
Interviewer in background, to Inna: “Were the grown-ups frightened?”
Inna: “Of course, we all were. Not just the adults, everyone”.
(Switch to Nadezhada Gurieva.)
Nadezhda Gurieva (teacher and mother): “The terrorists were in high spirits. They called each other by name. One of them was called Ali. He was holding all the negotiations next to me. The children would ask him, ‘Ali, can we go to the toilet?’ At first he let them go. But he soon got fed up with them. He said to them, ‘I am not Ali to you. I’m a bandit, a terrorist, and I have come here to kill you. I’m not Ali to you.’”
(Switch to Inna and Tata.)
Inna: “The one with the injured arm was the scariest.”
Tata: “The younger ones were nicer. They were all right, sort of.”
Inna: The younger ones were nicer. Well, they were kinder. The older ones were angrier.”
Interviewer in background, to Inna: “Why was Khodov the scariest?”
Tata: “He was shouting at everyone, saying he was the boss. He hit people with his rifle butt. He said no one could go to the toilet. They’d have to wait an hour.”
British commentator: By common consent, Vladimir Khodov was the cruelest of the terrorists [Born in Ukraine in 1976, he was one of the six leaders of the Beslan school hostage crisis. He had attended Beslan Middle School No. 1, which he was now terrorizing, as a child.] But when Larisa had demanded bandages, he had been impressed by her courage. Now he made a proposal.”
(Switch to Larisa.)
Larisa Kudzieva (mother): “He asked me, ‘How many children do you have?’ I said, ‘Three boys and a girl’. He said, ‘You can set your children free and anyone else in here who’s close to you and in exchange, we’ll put a suicide belt on you’. I didn’t agree to that proposal. I was afraid.”
British commentator: “The two women wearing suicide belts disappeared after the first day. Investigators suspect that their leaders blew them up when they complained they hadn’t known the hostages would be children. A day and a half into the siege, the terrorists blow up a car. None of the negotiators the terrorists had demanded had shown up. The security services feared they would be shot if they entered the school. Around 3 o’clock, a small convoy approaches, bringing a new negotiator. As a politician, Ruslan Aushev [former president of Ingushetia, 1993-2001) had been sympathetic to the Chechens. Now, from the headquarters of the siege operation, he phoned the terrorist leader, Ali.”
(Switch to Ruslan Aushev behind desk.)
Ruslan Aushev: “I told him I was Ruslan Aushev. I wanted to go in and talk to him about releasing the hostages. They gave me the route for approaching the building.”
Woman questioner in background: “Did you ask for any guarantees?”
Ruslan Aushev: “For me? No. If they were going to kill me, they would kill me. I was met by two men wearing masks. Then I went into the school. I saw those people. They weren’t high on drugs as people say now. They were quiet confident, sober.” [The terrorists showed Aushev the pile of dead men outside a window where they had been dumped.]
Woman questioner: “You think they [the terrorists] were ready to die?”
Ruslan Aushev: “So they said. I don’t believe they all wanted to die. Some had prepared themselves for death, others planned to get away. I asked to see the hostages. The gym was packed. I could see that there were at least 1,000 hostages. What struck me at once were the babies.”
(Switch to Zara Dudareva.)
Zara Dudareva (hostage): Aushev came out of the blue. No one had asked for him. To be honest, he brought us a glimmer of hope.”
(Switch to Aushev.)
Ruslan Aushev: Then we began talking. One of them took a neatly folded page out of his pocket and handed me their demands. It read: ‘To his Excellency Putin, President of the Russian Federation, From Allah’s Slave, Basayev [Basaev].
British commentator: “Basayev, who else? Mastermind of the hospital siege. Mastermind of the theater siege. And again, the inevitable demand: Russia must get out of Chechnya”.
Ruslan Aushev: I thought it would be very difficult to resolve. I told him, ‘All right, but release the babies at least. You must have children of your own’. He said, ‘All right, I’ll release the babies.’”
(Switch to Zara.)
Zara Dudareva (hostage): “Then one of the terrorists came and said they’d release those of us with babies. It seems strange now, but we actually thanked the terrorists for letting us go. I was there with only my nephew. But the rest of them had come to school with older children. They weren’t allowed to take them. They would have had to leave them behind. One woman, Tzkaeva Fatima, refused to go. She had three children there. She died, along with her eldest girl.”
British commentator: “He had done as much as he could. Within minutes, the terrorists’ demands were in Moscow, along with an urgent message to from Aushev. Come quickly. Come very quickly.”
(Switch to area near school.)
Government spokesman, to crowds: “Twenty-six hostages have been released but the situation is very complex. I ask you to be patient so that we may be able to tell you of more people having been freed, of more people being released. That’s all I have now. I’m sorry.”
Townswoman, talking to another woman: “If they released some, they may release others...it’ll be all right.”
Second townswoman: “Why is this happening? Why?”
First townswoman: “You must have hope. You must never give up hope.”
(Switch to Larisa.)
Larisa Kudzieva (mother): “When I talked to Ali, he told me about his family. ‘An aircraft took off from your airfield. It came to our village and bombed it though there were no rebels there, there was nothing there. My wife and five children were killed. By the way, you look very like her’. I thought that maybe this was an opportunity of sorts. Maybe I could use this to some advantage.”
(Switch to Nadezhda.)
Nadezhda Gurieva (teacher and mother): “The terrorists were becoming more brutal. There was no more water, no more damp clothes. Khodov was running up and down the corridor, shouting: ‘Children over 10, hands up! Pretend you’re hares. That’s what they made us do.”
British commentator: “On the evening of the second day, Putin’s advisor Aslakhanov, telephoned the school again. He spoke to the terrorist leader, Ail.”
(Switch to Aslakhanov.)
Putin’s advisor Aslakhanov: “The conversation was concrete, hard and of few words. He told me, ‘We’re expecting you, if you’re authorized by the President’. I said, ‘Some demands are unrealistic. Some are negotiable. I’ll talk to the President’. He said, ‘Then we’ll hold an official meeting with you tomorrow at 3 p.m.’ I talked with the President. He said, ‘The children must be saved at all costs. Agree to everything, but the demand to leave Chechnya is impossible’.
British commentator: “They’d got their meeting. But inside the school, the terrorists were edgy, irritable. Later investigators discovered this message on a tape recorder left behind by the terrorists. ‘One question tortures me: there’s a small puddle. There’s no water around, no river, no lakes, just trees, leaves, beasts, and a small puddle. How come there are frogs here?’”
(Switch to Larisa.)
Larisa Kudzieva (mother): “Ali returned to the gym after talks. He sat on the detonator, tossing his assault rifle from hand to hand. I sat near him and asked, ‘What’s happening, Ali? Our fate is in your hands.’ He just looked straight ahead. I thought he was humming a song. I asked him what the song was and he replied, ‘It’s not a song.’ He was silent for a while, then said, ‘It’s me crying.’ It wasn’t a song, but a moan from the depths of his soul. I said, ‘What do you mean? What’s gone wrong?’ He said, ‘I don’t want to lift my foot from the tripwire. I’m being forced to do it. They don’t want to talk. He said they’d told him that Russia, that Russia would never talk to terrorists. They said the problem did not exist.’ I asked what that meant. He said, ‘I don’t know. I was told: you have a day and a half. Sort it out.’ I said, ‘That’s not possible. Maybe you misunderstood them?’ He said, ‘I understood them perfectly.’”

IV. Part Four: September 3, 2004, Day 3 of Siege
British commentator: “The House of Culture, Beslan. In the early hours of the morning, one of the negotiators, a famous children’s doctor has come to brief relatives.”
Doctor: “Can you turn the lights down? I know that people have emotions. Remember, our strength is in our calmness.”
Julietta Gutieva (teacher and mother): “ I remember we all thought one more day and our children would start dying. That’s what we thought, we even talked about it. We adults might be able to hold on but the little ones couldn’t. Without food yes, but not without water.”
(Switch to doctor addressing large group in the House of Culture.)
Doctor: “They can hold on for eight or nine days. Today there’s no danger to the life of a single child. I speak as a children’s doctor.”
(Switch to Zarina Dzampaeva.)
Zarina Dzampaeva (mother): “In the early hours of the third day, the last thing I remember my son telling me, ‘Mama, see how beautiful the dawn is. So everything will end well. Some time later he said: ‘I love you so much, Mama. You’ve always done everything for me.’ We kissed each other three times, then he became delirious. He said, ‘It burns here, Mama. Please put something cold on it.’ He was asking for something cold. I was told afterwards that it was his heart. I think he died of a heart attack.”
(Switch to doctor addressing group.)
Doctor: “Your President is wonderful. He’s totally on your side. The only thing he’s saying is: Let’s not have a storming.”
(Switch to Putin’s advisor Aslakhanov.)
Interviewer to Putin’s advisor Aslakhanov: “What compromise was the government ready to accept to resolve the situation?”
Aslakhanov: “There was one option that seemed to satisfy both sides: we were ready to exchange hostage children for terrorist prisoners captured on a previous raid. There was no argument about this one.”
Interviewer: “Was safe passage part of the deal?”
Aslakhanov: “For them to leave? Of course. I’ve absolutely no doubt we’d have found them later.”
(Switch to government spokesman talking to crowd of townspeople.)
Government spokesman: “According to lists compiled of those held hostage, we confirm that at this hour there are 354 hostages.”
Townsperson: “How can it be 300 people? It’s the biggest school in the region and it’s the first day. Don’t you have a conscience?”
Government spokesman: “Unfortunately, at this time there have been no clearly formulated demands.”
(Russian tanks moving into position around school.)
(Switch to Nadezhda Gurieva.)
Nadezhda Gurieva (teacher and mother): “On the third day, it was clear that even if they didn’t shoot us because we were becoming uncontrollable, there would be mass madness. I saw it in the women’s eyes.”
(Switch to Elena Kasumova, deputy headmistress.)
Elena Kasumova, deputy headmistress: “The screaming of the children, the crying for water. That just could not be stopped. They tried to scare the children into silence with gunshots. But later on, the hall became uncontrollable.”
(Switch to Julietta Gutieva, teacher and mother)
Julietta Gutieva (teacher and mother): “This rumble of noise was increasing in the gym. All this crying and talking. On the third day, even the terrorists stopped shooting, but there was this constant rumbling sound in the air. Nightmare.”
(Switch to office of Aslakhanov in Moscow.)
British commentator: In Moscow Aslakhanov prepares to leave for the meeting [with the terrorists] at 3 o’clock. In his briefcase, the names of 700 celebrities willing to be exchanged for the children.”
(Switch to streets in front of Beslan school.”
British commentator: “In the streets the men of Beslan waited with their guns.”
(Switch to Ruslan Aushev behind a desk.)
Ruslan Aushev: I didn’t know where they came from. Who let them [the armed men of Beslan] get so near the school?
(Switch to streets in front of Beslan school, men walking around with guns over their shoulders.)
British commentator: “It’s 1 o’clock. Beslan’s people are listening to the news.
(Switch to Beslan people listening to a car radio)
From car radio, an interview with Zaur Farniev: “The authorities are trying to come to some agreement as regards delivery of food, water and medicine. There was gunfire at the school all night. Zaur Farniev is on the phone. What’s going on at the school right now? [Sound of explosion in background, Beslan people jump and look in direction of school and explosion.] Did you hear? There was a huge explosion coming from the school. [Sirens in background.] There’s been nothing like it until now. [Huge cloud of smoke rising above the school. A moment later, a second explosion occurs, much louder than the first. A crying wailing distressed woman comes into the crowd (from the school?). General concern and crying in the crowd.]
(Switch to Elena Kasumova.)
Elena Kasumova, deputy headmistress: “I opened my eyes – smoke everywhere, not a sound. I was probably deafened by the blast.”
(Switch to Tata and Inna.)
Inna: “My ears were blocked and sand was falling on me. I opened my eyes and saw that something was on top of me. It was the ceiling maybe, but it was very light so I pushed it off. “
(Switch to Julietta.)
Julietta Gutieva (teacher and mother): Something was dripping on us. Our skin started to burn. I didn’t know why. Later they told us it was plastic. We had hardly any clothes on, we were unprotected.”
(Switch to street in front of Beslan school. Sounds of continuous gunfire. Beslan men moving toward school.)
(Switch to Ruslan Aushev.)
Ruslan Aushev: “Two explosions! We phoned the school and asked what was going on. Their commander said, ‘We’re being stormed!’ If the army didn’t start it, then it had to be the armed volunteers. They opened fire, the rebels returned fire and that’s what started all this mess.”
(Switch to Putin’s advisor Aslakhanov.)
Putin’s advisor Aslakhanov: “I was met at the airport, and on our way we heard a bang, then an explosion and then continuous gunfire. Bloody hell, I couldn’t believe it! They’d started storming the school—the President had forbidden it!”
British commentator: “The army was now fully involved in the attack. The terrorists’ reactions suggest that the first bomb was accidental, but investigators believe that the second one was cultivated.”
(Switch to army person with map of school.)
Army person: “The first explosion happened here [pointing to a place in the gym].”
Interviewer: “What about the second explosion?”
Russian official: “If the first explosion was caused by careless handling of a detonator, the second was deliberately aimed to destroy everyone.”
Ruslan Aushev: “In the end, they said over the phone ‘Best regards to Putin, Allah Akbar!”
(Switch to Nadezhda Gurieva, teacher and mother.)
Nadezhda Gurieva (teacher and mother): “I understood that my daughter was dead. I think shrapnel must have hit her in the back of the head because she had no other injuries. And there were red tears in her eyes, and she started changing colour.”
(Switch to pictures of soldiers helping children, scantily clad, from the building to waiting cars to be whisked to the hospital.)
(Switch to Inna.)
Inna: Panic set in. People were jumping out of the blown-out windows. I guess that because of the smoke they didn’t know where to shoot. So there was gunfire in the gym for the first three minutes. That’s how we escaped.”
(Switch to Julietta.)
Julietta Gutieva (teacher and mother): “The main thing was to get away from that place. I can tell you that at that moment, you know, I even forgot about my own girl. My Christina. I could feel that these girls were somewhere close. I was certain of that. But my own girl – I couldn’t even see her. She was right behind me all the time.”
(Switch to scene of rescue. Patient on stretcher passes by doctor outside the school. Hand on carotid artery.)
Doctor: “Alive!”
(Switch to Aliyeta Sabanova, mother.)
Aliyeta Sabanova, mother: ‘One of them [terrorists] was shouting ‘Run to the canteen, quickly!’ And then, Khodov shouted: ‘Come here, quick, and place the children on the window-sills!’”
Woman in ambulance, crying: “I’ve got three little ones, my two daughters and a son-in-law in there. They just keep bringing them out. They keep coming out.”
(Switch to Nadezhda Gurieva, teacher and mother.)
Nadezhda Gurieva (teacher and mother): “I tried to pick Boris [her son] up, but I couldn’t because my right arm was injured. I put him down and told him, ‘Wait here, my boy. I’ll get the girls out and come back for you.’”
(Switch to army soldiers with guns trained on windows of school.)
Army soldier: “Don’t shoot!”
Nadezhda Gurieva (teacher and mother): “I was barefoot because there were people lying everywhere. How can you step on people with your shoes on? I came back and asked the terrorists to help me get to my boy. They just swore at me and punched me and told me I’d be shot. That’s when I realized I’d never get my son out of there.”
(Switch to Aliyeta Sabanova, mother, inside room of school.)
Aliyeta Sabanova, mother: “Khodov put us against those windows [pointing to windows from inside school], we were waving curtains. There was shooting going on all the time. I was shouting, ‘Don’t shoot, there are children here!’ It lasted a long time. I don’t remember how long. There were loud shouts: ‘Allah Akbar! Allah Akbar!’ I thought the terrorists were finishing us off. It turned out that our troops were all around, handing people out through the windows.”
(Switch to street.)
Woman hostage on street: “It was so unexpected when they surrounded us.”
Man on street: “What’s happening now?”
Woman hostage on street: “We were surrounded by explosives. They said if there was a storming they would press the button.”
(Switch to Larisa Kudzieva.)
Larisa Kudzieva (mother): “That was when I was wounded. I clearly felt pain in my arm and in my face. I thought, ‘God, how it hurts.’ Then I didn’t hear a thing – no shooting, no screaming. All I heard was a din. A din like the clinking two crystal glasses. And I thought ‘How easy it is to die. It turned out to be very easy. My son was under me and when my blood began to drip on him, he screamed ‘Mummy, mummy!’ I didn’t want him to see me bleed. I did not want this to be fixed in his memory. So I automatically raised my hand to hide my face. And I felt with the tips of my fingers that a bone was sticking out. That’s the last thing I remember.”
When I came to, our soldiers were already here. I couldn’t see anything and began to wipe off the blood. I saw a soldier in the doorway and he was saying: ‘Good girl, just hold on a little longer, I’m here. We’ll soon get you out of here.’ I thought, ‘Well, nobody’s called me a girl for a while. OK, I’ll hold on.’
(Switch to crowd, addressed by two men.)
Official: “We ask those who can to visit the morgue and identify the bodies”.
Another official: “What is our task now? We need to bury our children”.


V. Part Five: Six Weeks after the Beslan Siege
(Scene of Beslan rural homestead, barking dog, donkey.)
British commentator: “October. The first light snow has already fallen on the mountains near Beslan. It is forty days since the catastrophe hit the school. Time, in the Orthodox tradition, to say farewell to the souls of the dead. In Vladikavkaz [capital of North Ossetia], the interrogation of the only captured terrorist continues.
(Switch to interrogator and terrorist Kulaev.)
Interrogator: Are you ready to give evidence?
Kulaev: Yes.
(Switch to streets and yards of Beslan.)
British commentator: Throughout the streets and yards of Beslan, the men prepare the commemoration meal. In this courtyard alone [schoolyard], 37 people died.”
(Switch to women moving up staircases of school.)
British commentator: They come up every staircase to pay their respects to the deceased children and adults, to the teachers and their pupils, to their fathers and mothers, to their sons and daughters. Over 350 people were killed in the siege of Beslan, more than half of them children. Amongst them were Nadezhda’s children, Vera and Boris, and Zar, Zarina’s son who died of a heart attack.”

Sources:
1. Website of Djigit Gulam is at http://djigitgulam.com/; accessed November 24, 2007.
2. “Dispatches Beslan” is available at http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-402783786...; accessed November 24, 2007.