ECtHR finds violations of the right to life of Beslan terror act victims

The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has accepted to consideration the complaints of most of the applicants, who suffered from the terror act with hostage taking in Beslan in 2004. According to the lawyer Sergey Knyazkin, who is representing the applicants' interests of the, the consideration should help to identify the mistakes that led to massive children's deaths.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that the case "Tagaeva et al versus Russia" unites seven complaints lodged by 447 victims. Relatives of the terror act casualties appealed to the ECtHR back in 2007. The court focuses of the measures taken by the authorities to prevent the terror act, the issues related to the indiscriminate use of weapons and planning the operation to liberate the hostages.

The ECtHR has also declared inadmissible the complaints submitted by 51 applicants under Article 2 (right to life) and Article 13 (right to an effective remedy) of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), but declared acceptable the complaints of other applicants under Articles 2 and 13.

Sergey Knyazkin finds it a flagrant violation, when within two days of the hostage crisis the antiterrorist headquarters was in fact inactive, because no one could take over the command of the operation to free the hostages, most of whom were children.

Full text of the article is available on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’.