#6534
#8
gazeta.ru
November 4, 2002
Just let us bury them!
By Lera Arsenina
A week since the end of the tragic theatre siege and Muscovites are still searching for their loved ones, among hundreds of theatre-goers taken hostage by a group of Chechen terrorists in a musical theatre. Officials claim that each and every hostage has been accounted for and the identities of all the victims have been established. Official data, however, prove the fate of at least 75 former hostages remains unknown.
According to the latest reports, 155 former hostages, including 4 children, are still receiving medical treatment. As a Moscow Health Committee official told Gazeta.Ru, about 500 former hostages have been discharged from hospitals. Among those who are still in the hospitals 7 are foreign nationals; 26 foreigners were discharged from hospitals last week.
The death toll in the Moscow theatre siege still stands at 119.
While in the first days following the end of the theatre standoff, dozens of former hostages were eager to leave hospital as soon as possible, the process of homecoming has slowed down noticeably. According to doctors the state of health of most patients, whose medical records are marked with the letters ES (emergency situation), is estimated as satisfactory. 7 patients are said to be in a grave condition, one of them is in intensive care.
At the same time, about 30 of those earlier discharged had to return to hospital during the past week. According to hospital staff, those people had insisted on leaving hospital in spite of advice to the contrary from doctors, and consequently, had to ask for additional medical assistance.
The Moscow authorities have assumed all the medical costs. According to Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov, the city authorities have been receiving plenty of proposals from various firms expressing a willingness to allow the former hostages to stay at their health spas.
The head of the Moscow health directorate Andrei Seltsovsky said on Saturday that it would be possible to make final conclusions as to the true cause of the death of those people only after the completion of the forensic examination. According to Seltsovsky, the doctors have no information on those who are reported missing, which he says is a matter for the law enforcement agencies. However, the city police force still has no data on those who went missing in the wake of the theatre siege.
Virtually every official claims that during the special operation to liberate the hostages nobody was reported missing. However, the official figures paint a very different picture.
As the Minister for Labour and Social Development Alexander Pochinok said earlier, the total number of people held hostage by a group of the Chechen rebels on October 23-26 amounted to 858, of which 664, according to the Moscow health directorate, were hospitalized, and 119 are considered officially dead, which means that the fate of at least 75 former hostages remains unknown.
Relatives of those reported missing, desperate to find their loved ones, have turned to the media for help. According to the estimates of certain news web-sites, on November 2 the whereabouts of at least 118 former hostages remained unknown. Their relatives could not find them in either the city hospitals or mortuaries.
Among them, for instance, is 19-year-old student Dmitry Rodionov.
A friend of Dmitry’s mother told Gazeta.Ru, that in the evening of October 23 Dmitry together with three of his friends went to the theatre to watch the musical. They sat in the stalls, in the 16th row. After the storming Dmitry’s friends were hospitalized and, upon receiving treatment, discharged. Dmitry’s friends recounted that when the security forces started pumping in the gas to disable the hostage-takers, they covered their faces. Dmitry was there, by their side.
The hostages realized that the storming was inevitable and many of them wrote down their names and phone numbers on their hands; some even wrote death notes. Dmitry had his passport, a driving licence and a student’s ID with him. He stuffed all those papers into a secret pocket in his jacket, so that he could be identified in case he lost consciousness.
But even this did not help his relatives find him. Dmitry’s parents checked at various hospitals, asked at all the intensive care wards where patients still lay unconscious, and with all the city’s mortuaries, but Dmitry was nowhere.
Crisis hotline operators could not provide any information concerning Dmitry’s whereabouts, and eventually Dmitry’s family turned to other families that had also lost their loved ones.
In phone calls with the other families the Rodionovs quite often hear: ''We have already buried ours.''
Relatives discovered the body of one young cadet completely by chance. They found him in a special closed morgue where the bodies of the terrorists had been brought after the storming.
''We have no grievances against how the storming was carried out. Thank God, somebody survived. Dmitry’s mother hopes that he is in an intensive care ward; but, if he is dead, let us at least bury him!'' Dmitry’s relatives say.
In the same situation is the family of 29-year-old Yuri Sidorenkov, who spent three days in the captured theatre building with his wife.
She survived the attack – the relatives found her several days afterwards in a Moscow hospital. As for Yuri, his whereabouts still remain unknown. According to the Sidorenkovs’ neighbour, Galina Feldman, almost daily they go to the city’s mortuaries to identify bodies.
A prosecutor’s office in Balakirevskaya Street, where the Sidorenkovs have applied for assistance, keeps reiterating that they have no information concerning his fate, and admonish the desperate parents for calling too often.
Incidentally, a few days ago the prosecutor’s office instigated criminal proceedings into Yuri’s disappearance, but before doing so the prosecutors demanded that two witnesses testify that Yuri really was present in the musical theatre on October 23.
''They keep on telling us that everything is fine, but there is no word about those who went missing. We do not know where to turn for help,'' Feldman complained.
On Saturday NEWSru.com web-site published the letter of a close friend of a Chechen woman Yakha Neserkhoyeva, who was among the Nord-Ost hostages, and after the storming was hospitalized and then detained on suspicion of being a member of Movsar Barayev’s gang. Presently, Neserkhoyeva is among those considered missing.
Initial reports following the storming of the Nord-Ost theatre building in the early hours of Saturday, October 26, said that Russian security forces who entered the theatre hall shot dead hostage-takers as they lay unconscious. Later those reports gave rise to fears that some hostages could have been mistaken for their captors and shot.
Movsar Barayev’s gang was clad in black from head to toe. Some of the hostages, according to their relatives’ accounts, too, were dressed in black. For instance the extensive list of missing hostages whose relatives have failed to find out anything about them contains the name of a 17-year-old dark-haired boy who was dressed in a dark pullover and black jeans. Yuri Sidorenkov was also dressed in black jeans, a black T-shirt and black shoes…
More distressing news came last week from the lower house, which in its anti-terror frenzy passed an amendment to the law on combating terrorism and to regulations governing funeral services. The lawmakers moved to impose a ban on returning the bodies of terrorists killed during anti-terrorist operations to their relatives. Many observers denounced the initiative, arguing that it runs counter to the Russian Constitution that reads that no person may be considered guilty unless his or her guilt is established by a court of law.
Back to the Top Next Article
- Back to the Top -