Beslan Mothers distrust federal investigation

"I only trust the investigation of our, republican commission. I have no reasons to distrust Stanislav Kesayev and no reasons to trust Alexander Torshin," Mrs Ella Kesayev, a member of the Beslan Mothers Committee, told Caucasian Knot's correspondent earlier today.

The prosecution is not "searching for the truth, but forcing everything to match its version," according to Mrs Kesayev. "The task in this investigation is not to reveal the truth, but on the contrary to conceal the truth. Facts that are obvious to everyone are concealed," says Mrs Kesayev. "They have currently presented us photographs of the 22 identified gunmen when they were alive — we have been trying to attain that for several months. Now they have shown us the pictures, but those are photographs of the poorest quality possible, more like identikit pictures with blurred outlines of faces on eight of them which are absolutely unidentifiable. But there are other photographs, for example, for their passports. Why hasn't the investigation found them and included in the case? I told Deputy Prosecutor General Nikolai Shepel at the trial of Kulayev that it was impossible to identify anyone by those photos. He did not answer."

Beslan Mothers have reasons to distrust forensic tests conducted by the prosecution. "I also told Nikolai Shepel about the experiment which the prosecutors had conducted at our request. We had asked to invite lawyers and victims. That time they were shooting a flame-thrower to find out if the building takes fire because of the shot," said Mrs Kesayev. "However, we were not invited to this experiment, only our lawyers. Shepel told me that victims were more than 1,000 in number, so it was impossible to invite everyone. But our petition mentions several people, so if they were concerned for an objective investigation, it was quite possible to invite those people. We do not recognise such tests, I told the prosecutor, and you will have to conduct them again, this time in our presence."

Ella Kesayev does not either trust the forensic test by doing which the prosecution tried to prove that a GAZ-66 vehicle could quite admit 32 gunmen with all their weapons and munitions.

"In Moscow we did our own test and made certain that a GAZ-66 vehicle really can admit 32 gunmen, and even 40 people could be stuffed in there. But they were stacked on each other and besides, considering that there had been suicide bombers with their belts, it had actually been impossible to seat that number of gunmen in one truck," says Mrs Kesayev. "In doing so, we put in much less munitions than the gunmen had had to carry. Experts say the ammunition we loaded into the truck would have been enough for several hours of fighting, whereas they were shooting three days. I told Mr Shepel about that, but he said he did not recognise our experiment. But we do not recognise their experiments, either with the vehicle or with the flame-thrower."

• Prosecution's evidence dubious