At a meeting with members of the Mothers of Beslan organisation, Susanna Dudiyeva and Elvira Tuayeva, President Dmitry Medvedev admitted that “neither administrative, nor legal implications were made” after one of the world’s most terrible terrorist attacks and promised to revive the investigation into the Beslan school seizure.

The Mothers of Beslan* expressed their views to President Medvedev on the shortcomings of the investigation into the attack. For several years, they have been trying to raise the issue of the criminal liability of former North Ossetia President Alexander Dzasokhov and the security officials who were in charge of the republic’s interior ministry and federal security service branches at the time of the attack.

The two women also gave the president advice on how to combat terrorism at the meeting. In an appeal to the president, the Mothers of Beslan advised the president to lift the moratorium on the death penalty in order to intimidate future terrorists. They also proposed adopting the principle of collective responsibility.

“In our view, one of the most effective methods for fighting terrorism is to use collective responsibility and public awareness of terrorists. When the media reports on the death of terrorists, they should indicate how they were raised and how they embarked on this disastrous path. The people know their heroes; let them know their villains too!

“We believe that the terrorists’ close relatives should bear moral, financial and legal liability equally with them! If these criminals know that their family members will also have to answer for their deeds, they probably will not be so mindless”.

President Medvedev promised to look into their demands concerning the investigation as well as their request on social support for the victims of the Beslan attack.

The investigation into the Beslan attack stalled following the findings of an independent report by Yuri Savelyev, a scientist, explosives expert and member of the federal parliamentary commission on Beslan. Back in 2006, investigators promised to conduct an expert review of the report as well as an investigative experiment (building a model of the school gymnasium and firing rocket-propelled grenades at it since it was these very actions by the Federal Security Service task force, according to Savelyev’s calculations, that led to the first explosions in the gymnasium, which was full of hostages).

Neither the victims, nor the public have heard any official news on the investigation since this time.

* The meeting with the president came as a surprise to another major organisation of Beslan victims called the Voice of Beslan, whose representatives had also appealed to Medvedev for a meeting but were not invited.