Budennovsk Terrorism Trials Continues In Stavropol

The trial of suspected members of Shamil Basayev's terrorist gang is continuing behind closed doors in Stavropol at the request of the plaintiffs. The secretary of the Stavropol district court, Irina Getman, yesterday told RIA Novosti that the plaintiffs, who survived Basayev's bloody assault on Budennovsk (a town in the Stavropol district in southern European Russia) in 1999, based their petition on the fact that they did not want to relive their painful experiences in front of the press. Getman recalled that about 2,000 plaintiffs and witnesses were expected to testify at the trial. The Budennovsk attack left 143 people dead and more than 400 wounded.