At the end of last week, an event took place that was largely ignored by the Russian media. This event is the transfer of Ali Taziev's case to court. Most readers may have a reasonable question about this: who is this Ali Taziev in general, so that the media would pay more attention to his person? This man (if he can be called a representative of the human race at all) is none other than a terrorist nicknamed "Magas" (aka Akhmed Yevloyev, aka Amir Akhmed), whose hands are stained with the blood of numerous victims of extremist attacks. One of the bloodiest acts of Taziev is the terrorist act in the Beslan school (September 2004).
But how is it, - the reader may say, - are not all the terrorists who participated in the attack on School No. 1 in Beslan, their accomplices and patrons destroyed or brought to justice? Didn't all of these people suffer the punishment they deserved? As a separate story with the same “Magas” shows, one cannot put an end to the Beslan tragedy and eight years after its bloody end.
Now about everything in order.
September 1, 2004. Terrorists seize school No. 1 in the small North Ossetian town of Beslan, whose name until that moment was not known to every Russian citizen, and was completely unknown outside the country. September 1, 2004. It seems: how long ago it was, and at the same time, the feeling that the tragedy in North Ossetia was played out literally yesterday does not leave.
Let's not start a dispute about how, in general, cars with armed militants, bypassing numerous traffic police posts, ended up in the immediate vicinity of an educational institution, which at the time of the festive line was not guarded at all. It makes no sense to talk about this for the simple reason that in the situation in which the first Beslan school found itself in 2004, absolutely any school in the Russian Federation, and not only a school … there were no obstacles, just as there were no obstacles for Basayev's gang on the way to Budyonnovsk, there were no obstacles for Raduev's militants who traveled on buses around Dagestan, and there were no obstacles for the terrorists of the Movsar Barayev group, who managed to freely transport a whole terrorist arsenal to the capital, prepared for use for explosions in the subway and the seizure of the theater center on Dubrovka.
This article will focus on something else: the bloody denouement of the Beslan nightmare. The events that took place in the afternoon of September 3, 2004 are still difficult to subject to an unambiguous interpretation. There are too many unknowns in this terrible equation to be able to put all the dots on the "i" within the framework of one material. But it is simply necessary to touch on some aspects of this issue.
September 3, 2004. 13:01 (13:05). The data is slightly different. The first explosion is heard in the school building. It is this explosion that has sparked an ongoing debate for more than eight years about who was its "author". At the same time, the story with the first explosion looks as if it (the explosion) at that moment was not at all beneficial to either the Russian security officials or the members of the gang of Ruslan Khuchbarov, nicknamed "Colonel", who played the role of the leader of the group that took hostages at the Beslan school.
And in fact: if you follow the path of one of the versions that it was representatives of the Russian special services who staged an explosion in order to start an assault, then at the very first steps, thoughts may run into a dead-end wall. The fact is that in no country in the world that has elite special forces, do the fighters of these same units begin such a large-scale operation in broad daylight. It is the height of tactical stupidity to begin the assault on the building in which there were more than one thousand two hundred hostages at 13:05, when the militants had an excellent opportunity to see everything that happens in the immediate vicinity of the object they seized. And accordingly, it is at least unfounded to believe that the Russian security forces received an order to begin active actions to release the hostages on the day of September 3.
Moreover, the very course of events after the first explosion in the school building suggests that if the assault on September 3 by power units was planned, then the elite special forces groups were not going to conduct it at 13:05 pm. If we consider that the explosion thundered at the beginning of the second, and the FSB officers were able to enter the school building, at least 20 minutes (!) After this explosion, then one can state any reason for the start of the assault, but not a direct order to the elite divisions. We can say that 20 minutes is a relatively short time, but not in the case of the beginning of the assault. The experience of power groups "A" and "B" suggests that carrying out an absolutely unprepared operation is clearly not the handwriting of the professional fighters of these units.
It is worth recalling that the fatal explosion, followed by other explosions, which led to the collapse of the roof of the sports hall and the outbreak of a fire, occurred at the very moment when employees of the Ministry of Emergency Situations approached the school building. They arrived in order to take the bodies of the hostages shot by the militants. The arrival took place by agreement of the federal forces with the terrorists of Khuchbarov. And in this case, a discrepancy appears again. Considering that the militants watched the approach of the Ministry of Emergency Situations very closely, as well as everything that happened in the immediate vicinity of the school building, then the considerations that the order to start the assault was given at that very moment look unintelligible. It turns out that then the responsible persons sent a group of the Ministry of Emergency Situations to certain death … After all, after the thundering explosions, the militants opened fire on the rescuers. During the shelling, one employee of "Centrospas" Dmitry Kormilin was killed on the spot. Valery Zamaraev was seriously injured (a grenade fired at rescuers from a grenade launcher hit Valery, but did not explode), and died of severe blood loss on the way to the hospital, urging him to leave him and go to save the children. Aleksey Skorobulatov and Andrei Kopeikin (two other employees of the Centrospas group) were wounded by the militants.
The explosions were followed by real chaos, which is confirmed by both the participants in the spontaneous assault and the hostages who survived.
One of the hostages (Agunda Vataeva), who, several years after the Beslan nightmare, decided to tell about it in her diary, says that some time before the start of the spontaneous assault, one of the militants talked with someone on a mobile phone for several minutes. After this conversation, the terrorists announced to the hostages: “The troops are being withdrawn from Chechnya. If this information is confirmed, we will start releasing you. At about the same time, employees of the Ministry of Emergency Situations were admitted to the building.
It turns out that on September 3, at about 1 pm, the militants were also not going to make explosions in the gym, in which there were the largest number of hostages, but were waiting for confirmation of the information received about the withdrawal of Russian troops from Chechnya. Either these statements by the militants were pure hypocrisy, which, in principle, fits into the general outline of all terrorist acts with impracticable demands.
Light could be shed by information about exactly where the very first unfortunate explosion took place, which led to the beginning of a spontaneous (obviously not planned for this time) assault. Let's try to figure out on the basis of eyewitness accounts where exactly the explosion took place: inside the school building or outside, because it depends on who actually provoked the beginning of the "operation". At the same time, let's not forget that there are people in Russia and abroad who are sure that the gym was blown up by representatives of Russian special forces, violating all the laws of carrying out operations to free hostages.
In the diary of Agunda Vataeva, there is no information about where exactly the first explosions thundered. The schoolgirl, according to her notes, lost consciousness for some time from exhaustion, and when she woke up, she saw a burning roof of the gym above her and next to her - the burnt corpse of a militant. But this data appears in the testimonies of other hostages.
Fatima Alikova, a photojournalist for the newspaper "Life of the Right Bank", who ended up in Beslan school # 1 in order to report on the celebration of the celebratory line on September 1, 2004, and together with hundreds of other people, became hostage to Khuchbarov's gang:
“On Friday afternoon (September 3, 2004 - author's note) I was lying on the windowsill, covering my face with some kind of paper. Suddenly in the hall there was an explosion. I was stunned and thrown out the window … There were two meters to the ground. I fell. A terrible firefight began. I realized that it was impossible to stay in this place, and I ran - where, I did not understand myself. Climbed over some kind of fence and ended up between two garages. She covered herself with a sheet of plywood and remained there. I was thrown in different directions by a blast wave, but, fortunately, did not hurt. It only scratched my forehead."
Vladimir Kubataev reports (in 2004, a ninth grade student at Beslan school # 1):
“I didn't even understand if there was an operation. When the explosion came, we were all in the gym. There were over a thousand of us there. It was even difficult to sit there. At the same time explosives lay in rows on the floor, connected by a wire … The militants said that if we touch the wires, everything will explode. The explosives were also attached to the ceiling. And at one o'clock in the afternoon it just exploded. I still don't understand why. No shots were heard before that. All the windows in the gym went out ».
It turns out that the explosion took place inside the gym. And to associate it with the actions of the Russian special services, as especially “knowledgeable” people stubbornly try to say, is stupid, because to start shelling the school building where the hostages were and which the Centrospas employees have just approached would be the height of unprofessionalism.
There are witnesses that the explosion took place in the gymnasium, and before the first shots at the school began, there are not only among the surviving hostages, but also among those who were in the immediate vicinity of the building of the seized school.
In an interview with Kommersant, President of the Republic of North Ossetia-Alania Taimuraz Mamsurov, who in 2004 served as chairman of the North Ossetian parliament, and whose two children were wounded in a school in Beslan seized by terrorists, in particular, says:
“I was standing two meters away from everything that was happening, but even I don't know everything. The more time passes, the more it becomes known to me. But so far no one knows exactly what happened … As for the question whether the assault was provoked by the security forces, I have no such impression … AND explosions began in the gym …»
Says a serviceman of the Internal Troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, on September 3, 2004, who entered one of the cordoning rings of a school seized by militants:
"It it was hard to call an assault generally. At about one o'clock in the afternoon, when the order was received to create a corridor (as I later learned: for the removal of the bodies of the killed hostages by the EMchees), absolutely suddenly the school rumbled … Many instinctively ducked down, and at that moment, indiscriminate firing began. New explosions, panic. Dozens of people ran to the school: they were policemen and military men and even local militias, many of whom were in the hands of the most ordinary hunting rifles. Now I understand that we have not coped with the task of holding the ring, but when you think about the fact that many of the people who rushed to the school had children in it, then … There was a real battle, in which the only task was to cover the hostages running out of the school. And if with the children everything seemed to be obvious, then it was almost impossible to make out who is who, among others jumping out of school. Running, no beard, so not a terrorist … And who knows … Maybe he took the wounded child in his arms, but in the confusion under the guise of a militia rushed through the cordon. Although, what kind of cordon is already there …"
Many of those people who were both in the building of the school itself and in the immediate vicinity outside of it speak about the unexpectedness of the explosion. But what could have caused the explosion? After all, to say that the bomb exploded by itself is at least naive. To put forward a version (just a version), we will again turn to the diary of Agunda Vataeva and to information from other former hostages.
Agunda says that a few hours before the explosion, one of the boys began to behave in a strange way: "by the third day he was clearly not himself." Seeing a vessel with urine, which the hostages had to drink, he abruptly threw it away and told people to stop drinking it. Other hostages taken by the militants talk about wires that went to several explosive devices hung in "garlands" around the hall. At the same time, many of the hostages who could move around the hall (if they were allowed by the people of the "Colonel") often caught these wires …
These data give reason to say that some of the hostages, for quite understandable reasons, could simply lose their nerves, and he (she) could quite consciously (or unconsciously) hook the wires. Indeed, during the seizure of hostages in the theater center on Dubrovka (October 2002), according to eyewitnesses, one of the men in the hall suddenly jumped up from his seat and rushed towards the suicide bomber. Then he was stopped by another hostage, who managed to grab the man who had fallen by the leg. Could something similar have happened in Beslan? Moreover, in the gymnasium of the Beslan school, there was no need to run anywhere in order to detonate the explosive devices. Obviously, a person who is distraught with constant fear can do anything.
The fact that, after a series of explosions, there were, among other things, the burned bodies of the terrorists in the hall suggests that they were clearly not ready for the explosion.
One of the TV channels once aired a version that the hellish machine was set in motion by the terrorists themselves, trying to leave the school in the resulting chaos and mingle with the crowd. Allegedly, they realized that the special forces would begin the assault on September 3, as they had information about the ability to withstand dehydration by the child's body only for three days …
The fact that some did not just try to get out, but even got out is a fact. However, the version about "knowing the date and time of the beginning of the assault" and purposeful detonation of explosive devices by the militants can be criticized for several reasons.
First, the militants did not immediately deprive the hostages of water. According to Agunda Vataeva, on September 2 the terrorists released some of the hostages to the shower room, where they could drink water, although they argued that the water could be poisoned … Somehow this does not fit with the countdown of three days from the moment the hostages began to dehydrate their bodies.
Secondly, if the bombs on September 3, 2004 were detonated by suicide bombers, and the leaders of the gangs knew about it (perhaps they gave an order), then why none of the hostages speaks about the typical exclamations of the suicide bombers in this case, “Allah Akbar!”preceding an immediate terrorist strike, after which the militants send themselves and others to their deaths? Did the terrorists, most of whom called themselves martyrs, decided to deviate from their far-fetched tradition?..
However, let us return to the testimonies of those who saw that some of the militants tried to leave the school building during the battle. Until recently, it was officially reported that 32 terrorists, including women suicide bombers, took part in the hostage-taking in Beslan.
It is known that one of the terrorists Nur-Pasha Kulaev tried to get out of the canteen, who intended to mix with the hostages, but was detained. In 2006, the court sentenced Kulaev to life imprisonment. At the same time, it was believed for a long time that it was Kulaev who was the only militant from Khuchbarov's group who managed to stay alive on September 3, 2004.
However, after investigative actions were carried out and an attempt was made to announce that all the militants were either killed during a special operation or arrested (like Kulaev), the hostages began to talk about the fact that there was at least one terrorist who was able to get out of the school building on September 3, 2004 …
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Photojournalist Fatima Alikova, who, as already mentioned, was among the hostages, as well as a student of school No. 1 (at the time of 2004) Agunda Vataeva talked about a certain person with a deep scar on his neck, who, in a strange way, did not even get into the lists of attackers at first.
Moreover, the fighters of the Central Security Service of the FSB report that the militants had external cover, because they themselves experienced targeted fire from the outside after they entered the building. Whether it was the so-called "friendly" fire by mistake or there really were terrorists' accomplices around the school, it is difficult to say, but the fact remains: Alfa and Vympel soldiers were fired at not only inside the school, but also outside the building. It was during the Beslan assault that these elite units lost more of their fighters than during any other special operation in which they participated both before and after Beslan.
And the "missing" terrorist with a large scar is still one of the mysteries of Beslan …
According to one version, the man with the scar could have been Usman Aushev, but, according to the investigation, he was killed on September 3, 2004 during a special operation. Why, then, was he not identified by the hostages (if they had such an opportunity at all)?.. That is, either the militant with a scar on his neck is not Usman Aushev at all and could well have left the school alive, or the hostages simply did not have the opportunity to conduct a thorough identification … Mystery.
But another riddle was solved, connected with the ideological inspirer of the seizure of the school. It turned out to be a former Ingush policeman, who was listed back in 1998 as “heroically killed while performing his official duty” - the very same Ali Taziev (Yevloyev, “Magas”), which was discussed at the beginning of the article. According to operational data, it was with him that the militants who were inside the school building kept in constant contact. On September 17, 2004, he was put on the federal wanted list, and in 2010 he was captured by fighters of the Central Security Service of the FSB during a special operation in Ingushetia, where he had lived since 2007 under the name of Gorbakov. Obviously, the fighters of the FSB special forces, like all those who lost their relatives and friends in the Beslan school, have their own scores with this subhuman.
By the way, in one of the incoming calls to the militants' number in the Beslan school, there is the phrase “Say hello to Magas”. In other words, Taziev himself could have been at school in September 2004. And get out of the Beslan school safe and sound … Judging by the words of the MVD Internal Troops soldier, this could very well have happened. Information about Taziev's withdrawal from school has not yet been confirmed, but has not been refuted either.
And last week, after a long investigation, the case of Magas-Taziev-Gorbakov was brought to court. At the same time, many argued that Taziev would not live to see the trial, because "he knows too much." But Taziev not only survived, but, apparently, gave testimony to investigators on the Beslan case and a whole series of other terrorist attacks. And if the convicted Kulaev was only a pawn in a big terrorist game and was hardly privy to all the intricacies of the preparation for the seizure of the school and the further actions of the leaders, then Taziev can shed light on many Beslan secrets. How frank Taziev can be, and how reliably these revelations will be made public is another question.
It is surprising that even 8 years after the terrible terrorist attack in North Ossetia, its participants and ideologists can quite calmly walk on this land, hide under false names and, possibly, prepare new extremist attacks.
P. S.
The situation is also confused by the fact that there is still no final list of the militants who took part in the attack on school No. 1 in the city of Beslan. More precisely, there are lists, there are many of them, but they also differ very significantly.
One of the most extended lists of participants in the terrorist act in Beslan in September 2004 is the list in the book “Beslan. Who is guilty? Let us take the liberty to cite it in the material.
We can only count on the fact that sooner or later retribution will overtake each of those who are guilty of the seizure of the Beslan school and the death of 334 hostages. And whether life imprisonment remains an adequate punishment for surviving bandits is a big question.
In preparing the article, the following materials were used:
TV program "Man and the Law".
