Beslan commission accuses officials of negligence

The head of the Russian parliamentary commission investigating last year’s Beslan school siege today said the regional police department had ignored instructions to strengthen security around schools and accused law enforcement officials of negligence.

Alexander Torshin was summing up the results of the probe so far in the upper house of parliament, while victims’ families expressed outrage at a prosecutors’ report that exonerated authorities in the deaths of 331 people – more than half of them children – in the terrifying hostage-taking.