Russia governor say Beslan investigation flawed

MOSCOW, Sep 1 (Reuters) Russian officials investigating the Beslan school siege ignored or destroyed key evidence that would have shed light on how over 300 people were killed, the regional leader said on the second anniversary of the bloodshed.

On September. 1, 2004 rebels seized more than 1,000 children and parents attending a ceremony to mark the start of the school year. Two days later, 333 hostages, more than half of them children, died in a chaotic storming of the school.

Some victims' relatives believe a botched rescue operation contributed to the deaths and that subsequent inquiries have deliberately covered up mistakes made by senior officials overseeing the operation.

In a newspaper interview, North Ossetian President Taimuraz Mamsurov did not say what led to the deaths but he said investigators' mistakes meant the truth may never now emerge.

''What is there that can be investigated if practically all the pieces of forensic evidence were destroyed, taken to the dump, two days after the terrorist act in the school,'' he told government daily Rossiisskaya Gazeta.

''It was impossible to examine and log all the details, which could shed light on the tragedy, in two days,'' he added. ''I have serious suspicions about whether this was all done without prejudice and bias.'' The comments by Mamsurov -- whose region includes Beslan -- were the strongest criticism of the official investigation to come from a top official in the two years since the siege.

The Beslan drama shocked the world and prompted President Vladimir Putin to launch a series of controversial political reforms citing the need to face what he described as ''a war declared by terrorists on Russia''.

Prosecutors are still investigating the siege.

A parliamentary inquiry has issued only an interim report in which it declined to blame senior officials.

CONFLICTING THEORIES According to leaks from investigators, security forces stormed the school after the rebels blew up an explosive device inside the school. The majority of the victims were killed in that blast, investigators say.

Mamsurov said it remained a mystery who -- rebels or security forces -- was to blame for the explosion.

A private report by a member of the parliamentary commission posted on the web site www.pravdabeslana.ru this week challenged the official version.

Yuri Savelyev, an expert in explosives, said two grenade launcher rounds fired from a building controlled by security forces had triggered the storming and caused many of the deaths.

Members of the parliamentary commission have rejected Savelyev's conclusions, but did not present any arguments of their own.

The two years since Beslan have been marked by a strong Russian push against separatists in the volatile region.

Shamil Basayev, the rebel field commander who said he masterminded the Beslan hostage-taking, is dead. Russian forces also killed separatist leader Aslan Maskhadov.

The siege also allowed Putin to boost his political control over the country as a whole. The Kremlin wants to consolidate its power ahead of a 2008 presidential election, when Putin must hand over power to a successor, say analysts.

New legislation pushed through parliament, where the pro-Kremlin party has a two-thirds majority, abolished direct elections for regional governors. They are now, in effect, Kremlin appointees.

The new laws also toughened rules for registering political parties and changed the rules of parliamentary elections to make it harder for small opposition parties to win seats.

REUTERS BDP RK1736