15 December 2005, 17:25
Beslan victim, N Ossetia's emergencies chief give contradictory evidence
"There was nobody alive in the school gymnasium by the moment the fire began," Mr Boris Dzgoyev, chief of the Russian Civil Defence and Emergencies Ministry's Main Department for North Ossetia, said at the Beslan terrorist act trial earlier today, as quoted by Interfax. "I cannot give an assessment if there was somebody alive or not in the gymnasium. I am saying that based on the forensic examination data," he specified.
Mr Dzgoyev who is currently giving evidence in North Ossetia's Supreme Court as a witness in the trial of Mr Nurpashi Kulayev whom the government considers the only surviving participant in the attack on the school also said that officers of the emergencies group had carried a total of 323 bodies, including those of 186 children, out of the school. Besides, the remains of 31 gunmen had been found.
Mr Dzgoyev indicated that documents said that the school roof had begun to glow at 1:05 p.m. MSK and the fire had begun at 2:51 p.m. He also noted that Emergencies' fire brigades had been given orders to extinguish the fire in the school at 3:10 p.m. The orders had been given by the head of the operations headquarters.
"The brigades began to extinguish the fire at 3:20 p.m. They could not begin earlier because there was no such command," he emphasised.
Mr Dzgoyev said that they had managed to put out the fire within 30 minutes. The firemen had continued to supply water to the gymnasium in case there had been explosive devices. However, a blast had occurred in the centre of the gymnasium at that time, according to him. So the firemen had left the gymnasium for a while as requested by special services.
Mr Dzgoyev denied allegations that the fire-engines had not had enough water. He explained that the fire-engine without water had not belonged to Emergencies, but to a flour mill. This had been a vehicle in which a relative of some hostages had come.
At the same time, Mr Bogayev, a victim who attended the trial, claimed that the fire hoses had only been long enough to reach the weight training part, not the entire gymnasium. He said that other eyewitnesses and he had carried out children "burning alive."
The victim disproved Mr Dzgoyev's statement that there had been nobody alive in the gymnasium by the start of the fire. He called the materials which Mr Dzgoyev had referred to in his statement false.
"These conclusions are false. We were running in, carrying children out, they were burning alive. The right side of the gym collapsed and the left side began to fall off in parts, so the floor in the gym took fire," Mr Bogayev said.
In his evidence given prior to the above reports earlier today, Lieutenant General Valery Andreyev, former chief of the Federal Security Service Department for North Ossetia, admitted that armoured vehicles had been used on 3 September 2004 and said, "The responsibility for the use of tanks and flame-throwers is on the Special Force Centre head Tikhonov."
"This matter was not part of my jurisdiction," he added.
Mr Andreyev also said, "No onslaught was being prepared, but an enforcement operation for setting the hostages free was being prepared." According to him, it was only on 3 September that a kind of arrangement between the terrorists and the operations headquarters had been reached when the gunmen had allowed dead bodies to be removed from the school, Interfax reports.
"We did everything as we had arranged. We got a truck to the school and a gunman came out the school. He was calm and he was giving constructive orders to our people in the truck. However, when the first body was being loaded, there was a blast. The gunman was still calm during the first blast, but when another one occurred, he ran into the school. After that, I ordered the enforcement operation for setting the hostages free," the former republican security chief said.
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