Frontline Confidential – Beslan: Has the truth been told?

Writer Timothy Phillips talks about Beslan three years after the terrible tragedy there. He looks at whether the small tight-knit community been able to overcome the shock of what happened and questions whether we will ever find out the truth about the events of September 2004.

Timothy Phillips was born and grew up in Northern Ireland, and studied at the universities of Oxford and Helsinki. He has travelled widely in the former Soviet Union, including the Caucasus.

In 2005 he completed a doctoral thesis on the development of holiday and health resorts in Russia. He has worked extensively as a translator and was the principal translator for the BBC on their documentaries about the Beslan school crisis.
 
Phillips is the author of Beslan: The Tragedy of School No 1. The book examines in detail the events of the three-day siege, when over 1,200 hostages – mostly women and children – were herded into the gymnasium of School No. 1 by terrorists.

It gives the story of the tragedy at Beslan in the words of the people involved and talks about their lives in a deeply fractured region.

Moderated by David Hearst – leader writer on foreign affairs for the Guardian and the paper’s former correspondent in Moscow.