Russia 'failed to prevent' Beslan massacre, ECHR rules

The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that Russia failed to take measures to prevent the school siege in the city of Beslan in 2004, in which more than 330 people died.

The court ruled that serious failings by the Russian authorities meant that the victims' right to life was violated, and ordered Russia to pay €3 million in reparations.

The court has also criticised Moscow for its investigation of the case, which stalled several years ago. No Russian official has been held responsible for the high number of deaths, which included 186 children.

In the siege, Chechen separatists took more than 1,000 hostages, the vast majority of them children.

Masked men and women, wearing bomb belts, burst into the school shortly after 9:00am local time, opening fire in the courtyard as a ceremony marking the beginning of the school year was coming to a close.

The hostages were crammed into the school’s sports hall beneath explosives strung from the basketball hoops, as the perpetrators executed a number of teachers and parents. 

The hostage-takers stipulated the recognition of formal Chechen independence as their main demand.

During the 1990s, Russia waged two wars in Chechnya, which resulted in tens of thousands of civilian and military deaths. Chechnya sought to assert its de facto independence from Moscow but defeat led to the forced integration of the province into the Russian federation.

The siege lasted for three days, when Russian security forces stormed the building, putting it an ended.

Survivors and relatives said Russian officials, including President Vladimir Putin, mishandled the hostage crisis and ignored intelligence indicating that a hostage-taking scenario was being planned.

The Strasbourg court on Thursday decided that Russia had failed to take sufficient preventative measures, with authorities ignoring warnings about an impending attack at an educational facility in the region, putting hostages at greater risk.

In two five-to-two majority votes, the ECHR also decided that the command structure of the operation against the hostage takers had lacked formal leadership and that the excessive use of force on part of security forces, who used "powerful weapons such as tank cannon, grenade launchers and flame-throwers", had contributed to the escalation of the crisis, leading to more casualties.