The journalists covered the memorial services and a protest organized by Voice of Beslan, a group of parents whose children were taken hostage and killed either in the terrorist attack or subsequent storming of their school by special forces. They have demanded accountability from the government for the disastrous rescue attempt which wound up killing as many people as the terrorists had.
As Yelena Milashina of Novaya Gazeta reported on September 3, the parents were surrounded by counter-protesters in t-shirts with the word "Anti-Terror" who had been hanging around the school for the past few days. One mother began filming the "Anti-Terror" youth and then they grabbed her camera and ripped her dress.
Kostyucheko then took out her phone and begin filming the incident. A man in an "Anti-Terror" t-shirt in turn grabbed her phone and notebook, then twisted her arms behind her back and dragged her across the gym and courtyard of the school. Police then stopped the attacker and told Kostyuchenko they knew him and would get her telephone back.
Meanwhile, while Khachatryan was attempting to photograph Kostyuchenko, another man struck her in the back and grabbed her phone and casually walked away. He then returned and told two other men to seize the journalist, and ultimately let her go. Police did not make any move to detain them.
Then later in the day, the two journalists went to the cemetery where the victims were buried. A man in a hat approached them and told them to "get out." He then grabbed the women by their collars and dragged them along the ground, then stopped and began to beat Kostyuchenko, striking her face. Police who were several meters away did not intervene. Later, the journalists discovered the man was the groundskeeper and had lost his own child in the terrorist attack. He blamed the journalists for organizing the demonstration and disrupting the memorial service.
When the two reporters went to the police to make a complaint, they were held at the police station and told that it was the only safe place for them in Beslan. Only when officials in the Interior Ministry in Moscow intervened after the editors of Novaya Gazeta complained to them were the journalists released. Their telephones were delivered directly to them at the airport as they prepared to fly home. They then discovered that the phones had been stripped of all data including apps. Police said they "found them by the railroad tracks."
Kasparov.ru reports that at least six members of Voice of Beslan, a group of parents of children killed during the attack protested about the lack of government accountability for the storming. They were detained along with the Moscow journalists. The parents were then fined from 500 to 20,000 rubles (US $8 to $313) for violating the law on demonstrations, which requires permission from officials.
Today, September 8, Kostyucheko wrote on her Facebook page that she had returned to Moscow, and that after visiting the doctor, found that she had apparently suffered traumatic brain injury in the attack.
Kostyuchenko said she would write a fuller report after she recovered, and swore at the siloviki of the RSO-A, i.e. the law-enforcers of the Republic of Northern Ossetia-Alania, as it is known formally.
-- Catherine A. Fitzpatrick