Amnesty to three Russian policemen

Women who lost relatives in Russia's Beslan school siege ransacked a courtroom as the judge granted an amnesty to three local policemen accused of failing to stop gunmen seizing the school. The policemen are the only officials put on trial over the 2004 massacre in southern Russian in which 331 people (half of them children) were killed. Some survivors accuse the authorities of a cover-up. As the judge began reading out an order granting the police officers an amnesty, the women began heckling the judge and tried to approach the bench but were stopped by a guard.

A group of about 25 women then smashed courtroom windows, overturned furniture and tore down blinds and a Russian flag. The judge withdrew to a side room and finished reading the order, without members of the public present. Heavily armed gunmen seized Beslan's School No. 1 when about 1,000 pupils and their parents were there for a ceremony to mark the first day of the school year. The gunmen, who were linked to a long-running insurgency in the nearby Chechnya region, killed most of the male hostages, set up booby trap explosives around the school and held hundreds at gunpoint in the school gymnasium. On the third day of the siege, an explosion tore through the gymnasium and there was a furious gunfight between Russian security forces and the gunmen.