10 years on, victims rage at Putin's silence over siege disaster

AS SHE prepares to mark the 10th anniversary of the Moscow theatre siege, one of Russia’s worst terrorist attacks, in which her American fiancé and 13-year-old daughter died, the anguish of Svetlana Gubareva has intensified, as has her anger with President Vladimir Putin.

Prosecutors still have not completed their inquiry into the deaths of 130 hostages who were held at gunpoint by Chechen terrorists for 57 hours. To the fury of survivors and relatives of the dead, even provisional findings have not been made public.

“A decade later, I’m still waiting to be told how my daughter Sasha was killed, and who bears responsibility for her death,” said Gubareva, who survived a rescue operation in which a powerful gas was pumped into the building before special forces stormed it.

“Sasha was gassed and then crushed in a bus that took her to hospital, under 32 other bodies stacked like logs. She could have been saved had the rescue not been botched. Foremost I blame Putin; he ordered the gas to be used and it’s on his watch that the truth has been covered up for so long.”

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Strasbourg’s decision in the ‘Nord-Ost’ terrorism case has entered into force

The “Nor’easters” — more than 60 of them — filed complaints in April and July of 2003. The applicants demanded that the government of the Russian Federation be recognized as having violated Articles 2 and 3 of European Convention (the right to life and prohibition of torture). They also wanted Russia to prosecute the organizers of the (hostage rescue) operation. Eight years later, in December of 2011, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled: Russia had violated the right to life, and each of the applicants was awarded compensation of from 8 to 60 thousand euros. As for the other points, the court found no need to satisfy these. This decision was found unacceptable to both the Russian government and the victims’ lawyers. The former insist that they did not violate any of the hostages’ right to life, and were acting “in a state of urgent necessity”. They stated that “a loss of life was inevitable” and that the authorities’ actions “minimized casualties”. The hostages insist — among other things — that the ECHR determine whether or not the gas was harmless. This June, the ECHR’s decision entered in force.

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The European Court reached a decision in the case of Finogenov et al, better known as the 'Nord-Ost' case, on December 20th, 2011. It determined that the Russian authorities violated Article 2 of the European Convention (the right to life), and on June 4th, 2012, this decision became final.

This did not take place on March 20th, 2012 — typically a decision enters into force three months after its delivery — but only in early June because a group of five judges at the European Court, headed by the Court President, had to act on a petition for the case to be considered by the Grand Chamber in order to get an acknowledgement of yet another

violation on the part of the Russian authorities. This appeal was filed by a small group of applicants, as most of the applicants agree with the court's decision. If most do not quite agree, in any case they filed no complaints that I know about.

I do not know if the five judges found it easy to reach a decision to not transfer the case to the Grand Chamber, but my principals in the transfer petition found it very difficult. And why is that? What is so complicated about the situation? The fact is that, in general, the applicants agree with the Court's recognition of the violation of the right to life and do not contest the entire decision, but rather have just one question as a matter of principle.

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While browsing the Internet, we accidentally came across a picture of an elderly woman holding a sign dedicated to ‘Nord-Ost’. We were moved by both the sign, and the person holding it.

We wished to know more about this person, and as a result of searches of Live Journal, we learned that this elderly woman is a survivor of the Leningrad Blockade, a teacher, and draws her own posters.

Her political leanings are Democrat, and on every 31st of the month, as well on as other days, she walks along Nevsky Prospect with her signs, and often stands with her posters in front of Saint Petersburg’s large exhibition and shopping center, Gostiny Dvor.

On the evening of May 6th she was at Gostiny Dvor, holding up two signs, with two more on the sidewalk next to her. The police simply walked on by, and no one bothered her. The next day, however, she was again at Gostiny Dvor, and was arrested for some reason, but the police chief ordered her released, because: “I won’t holding a Blockade survivor here!” Later she moved her demonstration to St. Isaac’s Square, and stood by Tsar Nikolai’s monument with a sign protesting Putin’s inauguration.

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The terrorist attack in Beslan: Strasbourg considers complaints against Russia from hostages and their families

On April 10th, 2012, the European Court of Human Rights communicated to the Russian Federation seven complaints of violations by the state of the right to life and the right to effective remedy with respect to acts and omissions by the authorities before, during and after the seizure of hostages in School #1 in Beslan on September 1st, 2004. This means that the complaints have been officially communicated to the respondent state. Strasbourg asked parties to the proceedings a number of questions in order to allow consideration of the admissibility and merits of the complaints. It also required the government to provide copies of available case materials for its examination.

The entire proceedings were given the tentative title of ‘Tagayeva and Others v. Russia, and Six other Applications, complaints #26562/07, &tc.’ It contains complaints from 447 applicants found in the following petitions: ‘Tagayeva and Others v. Russia, complaint #26562/07’, which was submitted, inter alia by Emma Lazarovna Tagayeva, head of the all-Russia public organization ‘Voice of Beslan’, ‘Dudiyeva and Others v. Russia, complaint #14755/08’, filed by Susanna Petrovna Dudiyeva, head of the North Ossetia public organization ‘Beslan Mothers association of victims of terrorist acts’ (commonly referred to as ‘Beslan Mothers Committee’), ‘Albegova and Others v. Russia, complaint #49339/08’, ‘Savkuyev and Others v. Russia, complaint #49380/08’, ‘Aliyeva and Others v. Russia, complaint #51313/08’, ‘Kokova and Others v. Russia, complaint #21294/11’, and ‘Nogayeva and Others v. Russia, complaint #N37096/11’.

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The case filed at the request of President Dmitry Medvedev, which was to “shake up” the entire transportation police force due to the terrorist attack at Domodedovo, is now

closed. Investigators conducted hundreds of examinations, performed dozens of searches, and interrogated three hundred witnesses, but they did not find any evidence against the suspects. It was found that at the time of last year's attack the transportation security system was unregulated. Investigators, however, did identify several instances of fraud at the airport, and identified these for separate proceedings.

On Friday the Investigating Committee of Russia (ICR) announced that it had closed the criminal investigation into the failure of the transportation security requirements at Domodedovo international airport (Article 263–1 of the Criminal Code). The case was filed after Magomed Yevloyev on January 24th, 2011, brought an explosive device unhindered into the airport's entrance terminal and set it off. The terrorist attack killed 37 people and injured another 173. Immediately after the tragedy, the president ordered security officials to “shake up” the entire transportation security police force.

“Just as there were reasonable grounds to initiate a criminal case, there were also reasonable grounds to terminate it,” stated the ICR.

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