The regional public organization for assistance to the victims of the terrorist acts at ‘Nord-Ost’, whose membership includes:

 Victims and relatives of  the victims in the audience of the seized theater (Moscow, 2002); Students, teachers, and parents from School No. 1 (North Osetia, city of Beslan, 2004); Victims and relatives of the victims of the apartment blasts on Guryanov Street and Kashirsk Highway (Moscow, 1999); Relatives of the victims of the bombed airliners, the Tu-154′Moscow-Volgograd’ and the Tu-134′Moscow-Sochi' (2004)

 We appeal to you personally with the following statement:

 It has been three years since ‘Nord-Ost’.  The investigation still has not found who was guilty in the deaths of the hostages, but for some reason it is still confident of it having been a ‘successful’ victory in preserving ‘Russia’s authority in the international arena’. The image of a nation supported by a mountain of corpses, the bodies of its own peaceful citizens — can there be a limit to this cynicism?!

During the years of your administration, you clearly kept your famous promise: “Kill them on the john!”  Apparently this is true, since the main goal of the government during any terrorist attack has become: the death of all terrorists, not leaving a single one alive for questioning, to be judged according to the law, to find out the truth about the terror act’s preparation so that other, similar or even more terrible, acts could be prevented.  The most terrible thing, however, is that you kill innocent people along with the terrorists during the rescue operations.  How many victims that are killed has no significance.  Hostage rescue is not a priority. 

This is why the Moscow District Attorney was not interested in investigating acts of terror fully, and why he asserts — as you do — that the gas is harmless, that no one suffered from the gas (just like the flamethrowers at Beslan did not burn up any children), and that all hostages died simply because they were uncomfortably seated.  

It has been three years that we have been seeking an answer to our question: who gave the command to test the gas on one thousand people, turning them into human guinea pigs?! 

When you met with the 'Mothers of Beslan' committee, you looked straight into their eyes and said that you were misinformed about the flamethrowers that burned the children alive, but apparently you were not misinformed about the killer gas.  For three years we have known that the Kremlin walls are too high, that they preserve your rest and do everything to assure that you are not bothered by trifles such as acts of terror, Mr. President. 

But we, who suffered at Dubrovka, have decided to help you.  We shall now share with you some information, to which we have only recently been granted access, information about the investigation into the act of terror:  

1. Investigative materials make it possible to 'correct' the number of hostages killed at 'Nord-Ost': no less than 174. (129 deaths are from the ‘frozen count’ of 3 years ago.)  What is not understood is who made this error in arithmetic, and then, for almost 3 years, ‘hid’ these 45 victims! 

2. One can get an estimate of the ‘inoffensive gas’ from the conclusions of the medical experts on the deaths of the hostages.  After the storming of the theater, the dead hostages’ vital organs underwent sudden, irreversible, morbid changes: ‘sudden cardiac death’, ‘rapid death syndrome’, and ‘sudden death syndrome’ are the coroners’ variations on the ‘collective’ lethal outcomes of these hostages.  These hardly require comment. 

3. The shocking revelation that more than 40 of those ‘rescued’ received no medical assistance whatsoever.  (This figure will probably rise after an analysis of all autopsies.) 

4. The hostages who were fortunate enough to survive did not leave the gas chamber without their own ‘souvenirs’, either: some have hearing and memory losses, while others have come down with ulcers and asthma. 

5. The investigation did not even try to prove that the storming of the theater was absolutely necessary, and bared open the senselessness of that monstrous operation. After the gas attack, the terrorists were still able to bitterly resist the special service soldiers, though they did not kill hostages or try to blow up the building.  

The materials presented here contradict and refute your assertions about the gas, Mr. President, which you repeated to reporters during a press conference in 2003.  You said: “The gas was not harmful, it was harmless, and could not harm people.  Not a single hostage suffered during the operation.” 

In October of 2002, during the events of at ‘Nord-Ost’, you violated the rights of our relatives and loved ones, you violated their constitutional Right to Life.  Three years have passed while the formal investigation has been delayed, and we, the victims of ‘Nord-Ost’, believe the results to be nonobjective, and consider them to be a violation of our constitutional right to an independent, objective investigation.  We appeal to you, the president of our nation, to preserve the constitution by requiring an independent examination of the circumstances of this tragedy, and its consequences, with the participation of experts from  international organizations, in accordance with those international treaties of cooperation in which Russia is a signatory.  We reserve for ourselves the right to appeal to the world community in determining the legality and absolute necessity of the use of special substances such as this gas, and the state’s responsibility for the actions of its representatives, which entailed the death of peaceful citizens on such a scale.  

Today, on this day of remembrance and mourning for those who died, on the third anniversary of the events at Dubrovka, we, the victims of acts of terror, we declare to you that we demand criminal charges be brought in the ‘Nord-Ost’ case, for Beslan, and for other acts of terror.  We demand a judicial trial, and will not allow everything to be simply be shoved into some archive. 

We demand the punishment of those commanders at the various headquarters in charge of the assault on Dubrovka, guilty of the deaths that their negligence during the hostage rescue led to. 

We demand the removal from office of those did not keep you fully informed about the proceeding acts of terror, and who are apparently now doing everything possible to cover up the secrets of ‘Nord-Ost’, Beslan, and other acts of terror. 

We demand that you, the president of our nation, acknowledge fully you own personal responsibility for the deaths of our children, loved ones, and relatives, by proclaiming the whole truth about the ‘Nord-Ost’ crime. 

We are tired of living a lie, and we declare that nothing will prevent us from going farther in our search for the truth.  We will keep going to the very end.