<SPAN STYLE="font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; color: #000000"> <center>President Vladimir Putin,</center> <P> I, mother of <B>Grigory Burban</B> - victim in Moscow as the result of the "successful" operation of "rescuing" hostages - want to ask you some questions, and fondly hope to receive answers: </P> <P> <B>Why</B> our son, as well as all victims, should have been responsible for carelessness, negligence, and perhaps even bribery of the officiacls in your government? Why had they allowed the theatre capture in the center of Moscow by the group of more than 40 terrorists armed with explosives and automatic weapons? </P> <P> <B>Why</B> having said, "security of hostages is our main task", you have not considered it probable to use well-known ways of handling terror hostage stand-offs? You see, the slogan "No negotiations with terrorists" cannot be universal. Is not your duty and job as a head of the state to use every chance to negotiate in order to save one more hostage, one more child? Besides, at theatre there were foreigners whose destiny you have decided to dispose, without having informed the respective diplomats. Almost three days were engaged in voluntary negotiations by people not having any relation to the official security apparatus. During that time you and your subordinates were busy elevating the bar of your prestige – an unshakable, callous worker of security service - even higher. </P> <P> <B>Why</B> after having selected the way of rescuing the hostages, who have been exhausted during your three-day meditations, by the use of a gas chamber, you have not deemed it necessary to address the experts of the world community for consultations about the planning and execution of the rescue mission and, most importantly, about the provision of medical aid after the gas attack? </P> <P> <B>Why</B> had you blocked access to those who managed to survive the "brilliant" rescue operation? Why relatives, diplomats and journalists were not allowed in the hospitals? What did you hide? </P> <P> <B>Why</B> had Office of Public Prosecutor given us the document in which it was written that my son was killed as a result of capture the theatre by terrorists? When and how was he and the others killed, during the capture, or the "rescue"? </P> <P> <B>Why</B> have you not disclosed results of a very modest and brief investigation (which had been conducted afterwards) of such a mass destruction of people? Had the investigation been conducted exclusively for you? Or was there something done not according to international laws? </P> <P> <B>By what</B> criterion or norm have you made the decision on the expediency of such a way of "rescue"? Even that frozen official figure of 128 dead grows ominously when taking into account how many are morally destroyed; wives and husbands who have lost loved ones, parents who lost children, as I and my husband had. Those people whose lives you have stopped physically and figuratively on this bloody date of October 26th, 2002. And most terribly, how many children who have lost their parents, as our grandson has, and whose lives you have invaded so barbarically? </P> <P> Have you weighed all the above before giving the order to storm the theatre? Lastly, how cynically does your statement on TV, "we could not rescue all, forgive us", sound? </P> <P> <B>IS IT POSSIBLE TO FORGIVE THIS?<B> </P> </SPAN>
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