02 December 2004, 20:37 Politics

The Beslan Commission will now read

Elena Rudneva The text of the report with the results of the parliamentary investigation into the circumstances of the terrorist seizure of a school in Beslan will not be ready until April next year. Before sitting down to draft it, the commission members want to thoroughly study the experience of writing similar documents by the US Congress, as well as the Spanish Parliament.

The only news from the next meeting of the commission on Beslan was the message from its leader, Alexander Torshin, that the commission had begun work on the text of the report. “Preparing a report is a very big job, and now its members are focused on the causes of those large-scale and systematic terrorist attacks that took place in the country, starting with the assassination attempt on the President of Ingushetia Zyazikov, the attack on this republic, the explosions of two planes and the seizure of a school in Beslan,” — listed the head of the commission, Deputy Chairman of the Federation Council Alexander Torshin .

However, the members of the commission, apparently, were forced to put pen to paper by the fact that they would no longer be able to learn anything new - almost all the witnesses and participants in the resolution of the bloody drama had already been interviewed by them.

Answering the question of what members of the commission could get from witnesses, Torshin replied: “We do not expect any new shocking facts from witnesses of those days.” However, numbers are still a problem. Members of the commission noted that they still do not have exact conclusions, and only one figure is known with accuracy - the number of deaths. “They thought the numbers were 331–330. Now we have found out for sure – 330.” Another fact, which, according to Torshin, was able to be established for certain, is that the ex-president of Ingushetia Ruslan Aushev , contrary to assumptions, did not remove any suicide bombers from school, but only removed women with infants. Torshin admitted that there is still no exact number of hostages who were in the building for three days.

What the algorithm for generating the general report will be, and how the 21 members of the commission will draw up a block of questions and answers in their area, its leadership is still finding it difficult to answer. Let us recall that from the very beginning, the members of the commission were divided into nine groups, each of which was responsible for interaction with different departments - the administration of North Ossetia, the Ministry of Internal Affairs , the FSB and other branches related to power, security and law and order. The members of the commission intend to take as a basis the report of the American parliamentary commission “9/11”, all 1260 pages of which the members of the Beslan commission will study in the time remaining until April. “The Spanish report is coming,” Alexander Torshin said optimistically, referring to the work of Spanish deputies investigating the terrorist attacks of March 11, 2004.

True, the deputies themselves do not yet know why they need to read such voluminous tomes. Thus, the commission coordinator from the State Duma , Viktor Dyatlenko, answered unequivocally. “It’s interesting. I looked yesterday - there was such a pile of papers there! Have you seen it in English? But they brought it to us in Russian yesterday,” Dyatlenko answered with a degree of pride to the Gazeta.Ru correspondent.

“Before doing anything, writing something, a person selects a list of references and references. So we’ll see.”

In fact, members of the commission on the sidelines, answering the question of how excerpts would be formed into the general text of the report, also recalled that they were not working in a legal framework, since their activities were not regulated by any law. “We still don’t have a law on parliamentary investigations in Russia. This is essentially the first serious investigation. Based on the experience of parliaments of other countries and our own experience, we need to prepare a law,” Viktor Dyatlenko outlined the difficulties.

On Thursday, at a meeting of the commission, its members listened to the leadership of the FSB. Two deputy directors of the FSB, Colonels Vladimir Pronichev and Vladimir Anisimov , came to them . According to the coordinator of the commission from the State Duma, Viktor Dyatlenko, both Pronichev and Anisimov were “witnesses of those events, active participants in the operation to free the hostages and helped in the work of the headquarters.” Dyatlenko, who oversees interaction with security forces in the commission, said that during the meeting “the details were clarified.”

The leadership of the FSB itself did not agree to speak to the press, and members of the commission refused to tell other details of the meeting with the security forces.

to the next meeting The commission intends to invite the chairman of the parliament of North Ossetia Teimuraz Mamsurov , the chairman of the parliamentary commission of this republic and the former mayor of Beslan Damir Daurov . “We have a lot of questions for him,” Torshin intrigued the journalists.