title: Beslan school siege

text: The lack of food and water took a toll upon the young children, many of whom were forced to stand for long periods in the hot, tightly packed gym. Many children disrobed because of the sweltering heat in the gymnasium, which led to false rumors of sexual impropriety. Many children fainted, and parents feared that these children would die. Some hostages drank their own urine. Occasionally, the militants (many of whom took off their masks) took out some of the unconscious children and poured water on their heads before returning them to the sports hall. Later in the day, some adults also started to faint from fatigue and thirst. Because of the conditions in the gym, when the explosion and gun battle began on the third day, many of the surviving children were so fatigued that they were barely able to flee from the carnage.


title: Beslan school siege

text: At about 15:30, two grenades were detonated by the militants against security forces outside the school approximately ten minutes apart, setting a police car on fire and injuring one officer, but Russian forces did not return fire. As the day and night wore on, the combination of stress and sleep deprivation—and possibly drug withdrawal—made the hostage-takers increasingly hysterical and unpredictable. The crying of the children irritated them, and on several occasions crying children and their mothers were threatened that they would be shot if the crying did not cease. Russian authorities claimed that the terrorists had "listened to German heavy metal group Rammstein on personal stereos during the siege to keep themselves edgy and fired up." (Rammstein had previously come under fire following the Columbine High School massacre, and again in 2007 after the Jokela High School shooting).


title: Beslan school siege

text: Overnight, a police officer was injured by shots fired from the school. Talks were broken off, resuming the next day.


title: Beslan school siege

text: Early on the third day, Ruslan Aushev, Alexander Dzasokhov, Taymuraz Mansurov (North Ossetia's parliament chairman) and First Deputy Chairman Izrail Totoonti together made contact with the president of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, Aslan Maskhadov. Totoonti said that both Maskhadov and his Western-based emissary Akhmed Zakayev declared that they were ready to fly to Beslan to negotiate with the militants, which was later confirmed by Zakayev. Totoonti said that Maskhadov's sole demand was his unhindered passage to the school; however, the assault began one hour after the agreement for his arrival was made. He also mentioned that, for three days, journalists from Al Jazeera television offered to participate in the negotiations and enter the school, even as hostages, but were told "their services were not needed by anyone."


title: Beslan school siege

text: Russian presidential advisor, former police general and ethnic Chechen Aslambek Aslakhanov was also said to be close to a breakthrough in the secret negotiations. By the time that he left Moscow on the second day, Aslakhanov had accumulated the names of more than 700 well-known Russian figures who were volunteering to enter the school as hostages in exchange for the release of the children. Aslakhanov said that the hostage-takers agreed to allow him to enter the school the next day at 15:00. However, the storming had begun two hours before.


title: Beslan school siege

text: Around 13:00 on 3 September, the militants allowed four Ministry of Emergency Situations medical workers in two ambulances to remove 20 bodies from the school grounds, as well as to bring the corpse of the killed terrorist to the school. However, at 13:03, when the paramedics approached the school, an explosion was heard from the gymnasium. The terrorists then opened fire on them, killing two. The other two took cover behind their vehicle.


title: Beslan school siege

text: The second, "strange-sounding" explosion was heard 22 seconds later. At 13:05, a fire started on the roof of the sports hall, and soon the burning rafters and roofing fell onto the hostages below, many of whom were injured but still alive. Eventually, the entire roof collapsed, turning the room into an inferno. The flames reportedly killed some 160 people (more than half of all of the hostage fatalities).


title: Beslan school siege

text: Part of the sports hall wall was demolished by the explosions, allowing some hostages to escape. Local militia opened fire, and the military returned fire. A number of people were killed in the crossfire. Russian officials say that militants shot hostages as they ran and that the military fired back. The government asserts that once the shooting started, troops had no choice but to storm the building. However, some accounts by the town's residents have contradicted that official version of events.


title: Beslan school siege

text: Police lieutenant colonel Elbrus Nogayev, whose wife and daughter died in the school, said, "I heard a command saying, 'Stop shooting! Stop shooting!' while other troops' radios said, 'Attack!'" As the fighting began, oil-company president and negotiator Mikhail Gutseriyev (an ethnic Ingush) phoned the hostage-takers and heard "You tricked us!" in response. Five hours later, Gutseriyev and his interlocutor reportedly had their last conversation, during which the man said, "The blame is yours and the Kremlin's."


title: Beslan school siege

text: According to Torshin, the order to start the operation was given by the head of the North Ossetian FSB, Valery Andreyev. However, statements by both Andreyev and Dzasokhov indicated that it was FSB deputy directors Vladimir Pronichev and Vladimir Anisimov who were actually in charge of the Beslan operation. General Andreyev also told North Ossetia's Supreme Court that the decision to use heavy weapons during the assault was made by the head of the FSB's Special Operations Center, Colonel General Aleksandr Tikhonov.


title: Beslan school siege

text: A chaotic battle broke out as the special forces fought to enter the school. The forces included the assault groups of the FSB and the associated troops of the Russian Army and the Russian Interior Ministry, supported by a number of T-72 tanks from Russia's 58th Army (commandeered by Tikhonov from the military on 2 September), BTR-80 wheeled armoured personnel carriers and armed helicopters, including at least one Mi-24 attack helicopter. Many local civilians also joined in the chaotic battle, having brought along their own weapons, and at least one of the armed volunteers is known to have been killed. Alleged crime figure Aslan Gagiyev claimed to be among them. At the same time, regular conscripted soldiers reportedly fled the scene as the fighting began. Civilian witnesses claimed that the local police also panicked, sometimes firing in the wrong direction.


title: Beslan school siege

text: At least three, but as many as nine, powerful "Shmel" rockets were fired at the school from the special forces' positions (three or nine empty disposable tubes were later found on the rooftops of nearby apartment blocks). The use of the "Shmel" rockets, classified in Russia as flamethrowers and in the West as thermobaric weapons, was initially denied, but later admitted by the government. A report by an aide to the military prosecutor of the North Ossetian garrison stated that RPG-26 rocket-propelled grenades were used as well. The terrorists also used grenade launchers, firing at the Russian positions in the apartment buildings.


title: Beslan school siege

text: According to a military prosecutor, a BTR armoured vehicle drove close to the school and opened fire from its 14.5×114mm KPV heavy machine gun at the windows on the second floor. Eyewitnesses (among them Totoonti and Kesayev) and journalists saw two T-72 tanks advance on the school that afternoon, at least one of which fired its 125 mm main gun several times. Later during the trial, tank commander Viktor Kindeyev testified to having fired "one blank shot and six antipersonnel-high explosive shells" on orders from the FSB. The use of tanks and armoured personnel carriers was eventually admitted to by Lieutenant General Viktor Sobolev, commander of the 58th Army. Another witness cited in the Kesayev report claims that he had jumped onto the turret of a tank in an attempt to prevent it from firing on the school. Scores of hostages were moved by the militants from the burning sports hall into other parts of the school, in particular the cafeteria, where they were forced to stand at windows. Many of them were shot by troops outside as they were used as human shields, according to the survivors (including Kudzeyeva, Kusrayeva and Naldikoyeva). Savelyev estimated that 106 to 110 hostages died after having been moved to the cafeteria.


title: Beslan school siege

text: By 15:00, two hours after the assault began, Russian troops claimed control of most of the school. However, fighting was still continuing on the grounds as evening fell, including resistance from a group of militants holding out in the school's basement. During the battle, a group of some 13 militants broke through the military cordon and took refuge nearby. Several of them were believed to have entered a local two-story building, which was destroyed by tanks and flamethrowers around 21:00, according to the Ossetian committee's findings (Kesayev Report). Another group of militants appeared to head back over the railway, chased by helicopters into the town.


title: Beslan school siege

text: Firefighters, who were called by Andreyev two hours after the fire had started, were not prepared to battle the blaze that raged in the gymnasium. One fire truck crew arrived after two hours on their own initiative, but with only of water, and were unable to connect to the nearby hydrants. The first water truck came at 15:28, nearly two and a half hours after the start of the fire; the second fire engine arrived at 15:43. Few ambulances were available to transport the hundreds of injured victims, who were mostly driven to the hospital in private cars. One suspected militant was reportedly lynched on the scene by a mob of civilians. An unarmed militant was captured alive by the OMON troops while trying to hide under a truck (he was later identified as Nur-Pashi Kulayev). Some of the dead insurgents appeared to have been mutilated by the commandos.


title: Beslan school siege

text: Sporadic explosions and gunfire continued during the night despite reports that all resistance by militants had been suppressed, until some 12 hours after the first explosions. Early the next day, Putin ordered the borders of North Ossetia closed while some of the terrorists were apparently still being pursued.


title: Beslan school siege

text: After the conclusion of the crisis, many of the injured died before patients were sent to better-equipped facilities in Vladikavkaz, as the only hospital in Beslan was unprepared to deal with the casualties. There was an inadequate supply of hospital beds, medication and neurosurgery equipment. Relatives were not allowed to visit hospitals where the wounded were treated, and doctors were not allowed to use their mobile phones.


title: Beslan school siege

text: The day after the storming, bulldozers gathered the debris of the building, including the body parts of the victims, and removed it to a garbage dump. The first of the many funerals was conducted on 4 September, the day after the final assault, with more following soon after, including a mass burial of 120 people. The local cemetery was too small and had to be expanded to an adjacent plot of land to accommodate the dead. Three days after the siege, 180 people were still missing. Many survivors remained severely traumatised and at least one female former hostage committed suicide after returning home, shortly after identifying the body of her child.


title: Beslan school siege

text: In his only visit to Beslan, President Putin appeared during a hurried trip to the Beslan hospital in the early hours of 4 September to see several of the wounded victims. He was later criticised for not meeting the families of victims. After returning to Moscow, he ordered a two-day period of national mourning on 6 and 7 September. In his televised speech, Putin said: "We showed ourselves to be weak. And the weak get beaten." On the second day of mourning, an estimated 135,000 people joined a government-organised rally against terrorism in Red Square in Moscow. In Saint Petersburg an estimated 40,000 people gathered in Palace Square.


title: Beslan school siege

text: Increased security measures were introduced to Russian cities after the crisis. More than 10,000 people without proper documents were detained by Moscow police in a "terrorist hunt". Colonel Magomed Tolboyev, a cosmonaut and Hero of the Russian Federation, was attacked and brutally beaten by a Moscow police patrol because of his Chechen-sounding name. The Russian public appeared to generally support increased security measures; a 16 September 2004 Levada-Center opinion poll found 58% of Russians supporting stricter counterterrorism laws and the death penalty for terrorism, while 33% would support banning all Chechens from entering Russian cities.


title: Beslan school siege

text: In the wake of Beslan, the government proceeded to toughen laws on terrorism and expand the powers of law-enforcement agencies.


title: Beslan school siege

text: In addition, Putin signed a law that replaced the direct election of the heads of the federal subjects of Russia with a system in which they are proposed by the president of Russia and approved or disapproved by the elected legislative bodies of the federal subjects. The election system for the Russian parliament was also repeatedly amended, eliminating the election of State Duma members by single-mandate districts. The Kremlin consolidated its control over the Russian media and increasingly attacked non-governmental organisations (especially those foreign-founded).


title: Beslan school siege

text: The raid on Beslan had more to do with the Ingush involved than with the Chechens, but it was highly symbolic for both regions. The Ossetes and Ingush have a conflict over ownership of the Prigorodny District that was inflamed by the 1944 Stalinist purges and the 1992–1993 ethnic cleansing of Ingush by Ossetes, with assistance from the Russian military. At the time of the raid, more than 40,000 Ingush refugees lived in tent camps in Ingushetia and Chechnya. The Beslan school itself had been used against the Ingush: in 1992, the gym was used as a pen to round up Ingush during the ethnic cleansing by the Ossetes. For the Chechens, the motive was revenge for the destruction of their homes and families; Beslan was one of the sites from which federal air raids were launched into Chechnya.


title: Beslan school siege

text: Upon learning that many children were killed by a terrorist group that included Chechens, many Chechens felt shame. A spokesman for Chechen independence cause stated: "Such a bigger blow could not be dealt upon us ... People around the world will think that Chechens are monsters if they could attack children."


title: Beslan school siege

text: By 7 September 2004, Russian officials stated that 333 people had died, including 156 children; at that point, 200 people remained missing or unidentified. The Torshin Report stated that ultimately no bodies remained unidentified. Locals stated that more than 200 of those killed were found with burns, and 100 or more of them were burned alive. In 2005, two hostages died from injuries sustained in the incident, as did a hostage in August 2006. A 33-year-old librarian, Yelena Avdonina, succumbed to a hematoma on 8 December 2006. At that time "The Washington Post" stated that the death toll was 334, excluding terrorists. The city of Beslan states a death toll of 335 on its website. The death toll includes 186 children.


title: Beslan school siege

text: Russia's Minister of Health and Social Reform Mikhail Zurabov said that the total number injured in the crisis exceeded 1,200. The exact number of people who received ambulatory assistance immediately after the crisis is not known, but is estimated to be around 700 (753 according to the U.N.). Moscow-based military analyst Pavel Felgenhauer concluded on 7 September 2004 that 90% of the surviving hostages had sustained injuries. At least 437 people, including 221 children, were hospitalised; 197 children were taken to the Children's Republican Clinical Hospital in the North Ossetian capital of Vladikavkaz, and 30 were in cardiopulmonary resuscitation units in critical condition. Another 150 people were transferred to the Vladikavkaz Emergency Hospital. Sixty-two people, including 12 children, were treated in two local hospitals in Beslan, while six children with severe injuries were flown to Moscow for specialist treatment. The majority of the children were treated for burns, gunshot injuries, shrapnel wounds and mutilation caused by explosions. Some had limbs amputated and eyes removed, and many children were permanently disabled. One month after the attack, 240 people (160 of them children) were still being treated in hospitals in Vladikavkaz and Beslan. Surviving children and parents have received psychological treatment at Vladikavkaz Rehabilitation Centre.


title: Beslan school siege

text: One of the hostages, a physical education teacher called Yanis Kanidis (a Caucasus Greek, originally from Georgia) who was killed in the siege, saved the lives of many children. One of the new schools built in Beslan was subsequently named in his honour.


title: Beslan school siege

text: The operation also became the bloodiest in the history of the Russian anti-terrorist special forces. Ten members of the special forces died (7 Vympel and 3 Alpha members). A commando called Vyacheslav Bocharov was believed to have been killed, but proved to be seriously wounded in the face but alive when he regained consciousness and managed to write down his name.


title: Beslan school siege

text: The fatalities included all three commanders of the assault groups: Colonel Oleg Ilyin and Lieutenant Colonel Dmitry Razumovsky of Vympel, and Major Alexander Perov of Alpha. At least 30 commandos suffered serious wounds.


title: Beslan school siege

text: Initially, the identity and origin of the attackers was unclear. It was widely assumed from Day Two that they were separatists from nearby Chechnya, though President Putin's Chechen aide Aslambek Aslakhanov denied it, saying "they were not Chechens. When I started talking with them in Chechen, they had answered: 'We do not understand; speak Russian. Freed hostages said that the hostage-takers spoke Russian with accents typical of Caucasians.


title: Beslan school siege

text: Though Putin had rarely hesitated to blame Chechen separatists for past acts of terrorism, he avoided linking the attack with the Second Chechen War. Instead, he blamed the crisis on the "direct intervention of international terrorism", ignoring the nationalist roots of the crisis. Russian government sources initially claimed that nine of the militants in Beslan were Arabs and one was a black African (called "a negro" by Andreyev), though only two Arabs were later identified. Independent analysts such as Moscow political commentator Andrei Piontkovsky said that Putin tried to minimise the number and scale of Chechen terrorist attacks rather than exaggerate them as he had done in the past. Putin appeared to connect the events to the U.S.-led War on Terror, but at the same time accused the West of indulging terrorists.


title: Beslan school siege

text: On 17 September 2004, Chechen terrorist leader Shamil Basayev, operating autonomously from the rest of the North Caucasian terrorist movement, issued a statement claiming responsibility for the Beslan school siege. The event was strikingly similar to the Chechen raid on Budyonnovsk in 1995 and the Moscow theatre hostage crisis of 2002, incidents in which hundreds of Russian civilians were held hostage by Chechen terrorists led by Basayev. Basayev said that his Riyad-us Saliheen "brigade of martyrs" had carried out the attack and also claimed responsibility for a series of terrorist bombings in Russia in the weeks before the Beslan crisis. He said that he had originally planned to seize at least one school in either Moscow or Saint Petersburg, but lack of funds forced him to pick North Ossetia, "the Russian garrison in the North Caucasus." Basayev blamed the Russian authorities for "a terrible tragedy" in Beslan. Basayev claimed that he had miscalculated the Kremlin's determination to end the crisis by all means possible. He said he was "cruelly mistaken" and that he was "not delighted by what happened there", but also added to be "planning more Beslan-type operations in the future because we are forced to do so." However, it was the last major act of terrorism in Russia until 2009, as Basayev was soon persuaded to give up indiscriminate attacks by new terrorist leader Abdul-Halim Sadulayev, who made Basayev his second-in-command but banned hostage-taking, kidnapping for ransom and operations specifically targeting civilians.


title: Beslan school siege

text: Chechen separatist leader Aslan Maskhadov denied that his forces were involved in the siege, calling it "a blasphemy" for which "there is no justification". Maskhadov described the perpetrators of Beslan as "Madmen" driven out of their senses by Russian acts of brutality. He condemned the action and all attacks against civilians via a statement issued by his envoy Akhmed Zakayev in London, blaming it on what he called a radical local group, and he agreed to the North Ossetian proposition to act as a negotiator. Later, he also called on western governments to initiate peace talks between Russia and Chechnya and added to "categorically refute all accusations by the Russian government that President Maskhadov had any involvement in the Beslan event." Putin responded that he would not negotiate with "child-killers", comparing the calls for negotiations with the appeasement of Hitler, and put a $10 million bounty on Maskhadov (the same amount as for Basayev). Maskhadov was killed by Russian commandos in Chechnya on 8 March 2005 and buried at an undisclosed location.


title: Beslan school siege

text: Shortly after the crisis, official Russian sources stated that the attackers were part of a supposed international group led by Basayev that included a number of Arabs with connections to al-Qaeda, and claimed that they had picked up phone calls in Arabic from the Beslan school to Saudi Arabia and another undisclosed Middle Eastern country.


title: Beslan school siege

text: Two British-Algerians, Osman Larussi and Yacine Benalia, were initially named as having actively participated in the attack. Another U.K. citizen called Kamel Rabat Bouralha, arrested while trying to leave Russia immediately following the attack, was suspected to be a key organiser. All three were linked to the Finsbury Park Mosque of North London. Allegations of al-Qaeda involvement were not repeated by the Russian government. Larussi and Benalia are not named in the Torshin Report and were never identified by Russian authorities as suspects in the Beslan attack.


title: Beslan school siege

text: In November 2004, 28-year-old Akhmed Merzhoyev and 16-year-old Marina Korigova of Sagopshi, Ingushetia were arrested by Russian authorities in connection with the Beslan attack. Merzhoyev was charged with providing food and equipment to the terrorists, and Korigova was charged with having possession of a phone that Tsechoyev had phoned multiple times. Korigova was released when her defence attorney showed that she was given the phone by an acquaintance after the crisis.


title: Beslan school siege

text: Russian negotiators say that the Beslan militants never explicitly stated their demands, although they did have notes handwritten by one of the hostages on a school notebook, in which they spelled out demands of full Russian troop withdrawal from Chechnya and recognition of Chechen independence.


title: Beslan school siege

text: The hostage-takers were reported to have made the following demands on 1 September <nowiki>11:00–11:30</nowiki> in a letter sent along with a hostage ER doctor:


title: Beslan school siege

text: Dzasokhov and Zyazikov did not come to Beslan; Dzasokhov later claimed that he was forcibly stopped by "a very high-ranking general from the Interior Ministry [who] said, 'I have received orders to arrest you if you try to go'." The stated reason why Zyazikov did not arrive was that he had been "sick". Aushev, Zyazikov's predecessor at the post of Ingushetia's president, who was forced to resign by Putin in 2002, entered the school and secured the release of 26 hostages.


title: Beslan school siege

text: Aslakhanov said that the hostage-takers also demanded the release of some 28 to 30 suspects detained in the crackdown following the terrorist raids in Ingushetia earlier in June.


title: Beslan school siege

text: According to the official version of events, 32 militants participated directly in the seizure, one of whom was taken alive while the rest were killed on the spot. The number and identity of hostage-takers remains a controversial topic, fuelled by the often-contradictory government statements and official documents. The 3–4 September government statements said that a total of 26–27 militants were killed during the siege. At least four militants, including two women, died prior to the Russian storming of the school.


title: Beslan school siege

text: Many of the surviving hostages and eyewitnesses claim there were many more captors, some of whom may have escaped. It was also initially claimed that three terrorists were captured alive, including their leader Vladimir Khodov and a female militant. Witness testimonies during the Kulayev trial reported the presence of a number of apparently Slavic-, unaccented Russian- and "perfect" Ossetian-speaking individuals among the militants who were not seen among the bodies of those killed by Russian security forces. The unknown men (and a woman, according to one testimony) included a man with a red beard who was reportedly issuing orders to the kidnappers' leaders, and whom the hostages were forbidden to look at. He was possibly the militant known only as "Fantomas", an ethnic Russian who served as a bodyguard to Shamil Basayev.


title: Beslan school siege

text: According to Basayev, "Thirty-three mujahideen took part in Nord-West. Two of them were women. We prepared four [women] but I sent two of them to Moscow on August 24. They then boarded the two airplanes that blew up. In the group there were 12 Chechen men, two Chechen women, nine Ingush, three Russians, two Arabs, two Ossetians, one Tartar, one Kabardinian and one Gurans. The Gurans are a people who live near Lake Baikal who are practically russified."


title: Beslan school siege

text: Basayev further said an FSB agent (Khodov) had been sent undercover to the terrorists to persuade them to carry out an attack on a target in North Ossetia's capital, Vladikavkaz, and that the group was allowed to enter the region with ease because the FSB planned to capture them at their destination in Vladikavkaz. He also claimed that an unnamed hostage-taker had survived the siege and managed to escape.


title: Beslan school siege

text: On 6 September 2004, the names and identities of seven of the assailants became known, after forensic work over the weekend and interviews with surviving hostages and a captured assailant. The forensic tests also established that 21 of the hostage-takers took heroin, methamphetamine as well as morphine in a normally lethal amount; the investigation cited the use of drugs as a reason for the militants' ability to continue fighting despite being badly wounded and presumably in great pain. In November 2004, Russian officials announced that 27 of the 32 hostage-takers had been identified. However, in September 2005, the lead prosecutor against Nur-Pashi Kulayev stated that only 22 of the 32 bodies of the captors had been identified, leading to further confusion over which identities have been confirmed.


title: Beslan school siege

text: Most of the suspects, aged 20–35, were identified as Ingush or residents of Ingushetia (some of them Chechen refugees). At least five of the suspected hostage-takers were declared dead by Russian authorities before the seizure, while eight were known to have been previously arrested and then released, in some cases shortly before the Beslan attack.


title: Beslan school siege

text: Earlier reports named Yacine Benalia (35) – A British-Algerian who had reportedly been killed earlier, and Osman Larussi (35) – A British-Algerian, who had reportedly been killed already. They are not listed in the Torshin Report.


title: Beslan school siege

text: The captured suspect, 24-year-old Nur-Pashi Kulayev, born in Chechnya, was identified by former hostages as one of the hostage-takers. The state-controlled Channel One showed fragments of Kulayev's interrogation in which he said his group was led by a Chechnya-born man nicknamed "Polkovnik" and by the North Ossetia native Vladimir Khodov. According to Kulayev, "Polkovnik" shot another militant and detonated two female suicide bombers because they objected to capturing children.


title: Beslan school siege

text: In May 2005, Kulayev was a defendant in a court in the republic of North Ossetia. He was charged with murder, terrorism, kidnapping, and other crimes and pleaded guilty on seven of the counts; many former hostages denounced the trial as a "smoke screen" and "farce". Some of the relatives of the victims, who used the trial in their attempts to accuse the authorities, even called for a pardon for Kulayev so he could speak freely about what happened. The director of the FSB, Nikolai Patrushev, was summoned to give evidence, but he did not attend the trial. Ten days later, on 26 May 2006, Nur-Pashi Kulayev was sentenced to life imprisonment. Kulayev later disappeared in the Russian prison system. Following questions about whether Kulayev had been killed or died in prison, Russian government officials said in 2007 that he was alive and awaiting the start of his sentence.


title: Beslan school siege

text: Family members of the victims of the attacks have accused the security forces of incompetence, and have demanded that authorities be held accountable. Putin personally promised to the Mothers of Beslan group to hold an "objective investigation". On 26 December 2005, Russian prosecutors investigating the siege on the school declared that authorities had made no mistakes whatsoever.


title: Beslan school siege

text: At a press conference with foreign journalists on 6 September 2004, Vladimir Putin rejected the prospect of an open public inquiry, but cautiously agreed with an idea of a parliamentary investigation led by the State Duma, dominated by the pro-Kremlin parties.


title: Beslan school siege

text: In November 2004, the Interfax news agency reported Alexander Torshin, head of the parliamentary commission, as saying that there was evidence of involvement by "a foreign intelligence agency" (he declined to say which). On 22 December 2006, the Russian parliamentary commission ended their investigation into the incident. Their report concluded that the number of gunmen who stormed the school was 32 and laid much of the blame on the North Ossetian police, stating that there was a severe shortcoming in security measures, but also criticizing authorities for under-reporting the number of hostages involved. In addition, the commission said the attack on the school was premeditated by Chechen terrorist leadership, including the moderate leader Aslan Maskhadov. In another controversial move, the commission claimed that the shoot-out that ended the siege was instigated by the hostage-takers, not security forces. About the "grounded" decision to use flamethowers, Torshin said that "international law does not prohibit using them against terrorists." Ella Kesayeva, an activist who leads a Beslan support group, suggested that the report was meant as a signal that Putin and his circle were no longer interested in having a discussion about the crisis.


title: Beslan school siege

text: On 28 August 2006, Duma member Yuri Savelyev, a member of the federal parliamentary inquiry panel, publicised his own report which he said proves that Russian forces deliberately stormed the school using maximum force. According to Savelyev, a weapons and explosives expert, special forces fired rocket-propelled grenades without warning as a prelude to an armed assault, ignoring apparently ongoing negotiations. In February 2007, two members of the commission (Savelyev and Yuri Ivanov) denounced the investigation as a cover-up, and the Kremlin's official version of events as fabricated. They refused to sign off on the Torshin's report.


title: Beslan school siege

text: Three local policemen of the Pravoberezhny District ROVD (district militsiya unit) were the only officials put on trial over the massacre. They were charged with negligence in failing to stop gunmen seizing the school. On 30 May 2007, the Pravoberezhny Court's judge granted an amnesty to them. In response, a group of dozens of local women rioted and ransacked the courtroom by smashing windows, overturning furniture, and tearing down a Russian flag. Victims' groups said the trial had been a whitewash designed to protect their superiors from blame. The victims of the siege said they would appeal against the court judgement.


title: Beslan school siege

text: In June 2007, a court in Kabardino-Balkaria charged two Malgobeksky District ROVD police officials, Mukhazhir Yevloyev and Akhmed Kotiyev, with negligence, accusing them of failing to prevent the attackers from setting up their training and staging camp in Ingushetia. The two pleaded innocent, and were acquitted in October 2007. The verdict was upheld by the Supreme Court of Ingushetia in March 2008. The victims said they would appeal the decision to the European Court for Human Rights.


title: Beslan school siege

text: The handling of the siege by Vladimir Putin's administration was criticised by a number of observers and grassroots organisations, amongst them Mothers of Beslan and Voice of Beslan. Soon after the crisis, the independent MP Vladimir Ryzhkov blamed "the top leadership" of Russia. Initially, the European Union also criticised the response.


title: Beslan school siege

text: Critics, including Beslan residents who survived the attack and relatives of the victims, focused on allegations that the storming of the school was ruthless. They cite the use of heavy weapons, such as tanks and "Shmel" rocket flamethrowers. Their usage was officially confirmed. The "Shmel" is a type of thermobaric weapon, described by a source associated with the US military as "just about the most vicious weapon you can imagine – igniting the air, sucking the oxygen out of an enclosed area and creating a massive pressure wave crushing anything unfortunate enough to have lived through the conflagration." Pavel Felgenhauer has gone further and accused the government of also firing rockets from an Mi-24 attack helicopter, a claim that the authorities deny. Some human rights activists claim that at least 80% of the hostages were killed by indiscriminate Russian fire. According to Felgenhauer, "It was not a hostage rescue operation ... but an army operation aimed at wiping out the terrorists." David Satter of the Hudson Institute said the incident "presents a chilling portrait of the Russian leadership and its total disregard for human life".


title: Beslan school siege

text: The provincial government and police were criticised by the locals for having allowed the attack to take place, especially since police roadblocks on the way to Beslan were removed shortly before the attack. Many blamed rampant corruption that allowed the attackers to bribe their way through the checkpoints; in fact, this was even what they had openly boasted to their hostages. Others say the militants took the back roads used by smugglers in collusion with the police. Yulia Latynina alleged that Major Gurazhev was captured after he approached the militants' truck to demand a bribe for what he thought was an oil-smuggling operation. It was also alleged the federal police knew of the time and place of the planned attack; according to internal police documents obtained by "Novaya Gazeta", the Moscow MVD knew about the hostage taking four hours in advance, having learned this from a militant captured in Chechnya. According to Basayev, the road to Beslan was cleared of roadblocks because the FSB planned to ambush the group later, believing the terrorists' aim was to seize the parliament of North Ossetia in Vladikavkaz.


title: Beslan school siege

text: Critics also charged that the authorities did not organise the siege properly, including failing to keep the scene secure from entry by civilians, while the emergency services were not prepared during the 52 hours of the crisis. The Russian government has been also heavily criticised by many of the local people who, days and even months after the siege, did not know whether their children were alive or dead, as the hospitals were isolated from the outside world. Two months after the crisis, human remains and identity documents were found by a local driver, Muran Katsanov, in the garbage landfill at the outskirts of Beslan; the discovery prompted further outrage.


title: Beslan school siege

text: In addition, there were serious accusations that federal officials had not earnestly tried to negotiate with the hostage-takers (including the alleged threat from Moscow to arrest President Dzasokhov if he came to negotiate) and deliberately provided incorrect and inconsistent reports of the situation to the media.


title: Beslan school siege

text: The report by Yuri Savelyev, a dissenting parliamentary investigator and one of Russia's leading rocket scientists, placed the responsibility for the final massacre on actions of the Russian forces and the highest-placed officials in the federal government. Savelyev's 2006 report, devoting 280 pages to determining responsibility for the initial blast, concludes that the authorities decided to storm the school building, but wanted to create the impression they were acting in response to actions taken by the terrorists. Savelyev, the only expert on the physics of combustion on the commission, accused Torshin of "deliberate falsification".


title: Beslan school siege

text: A separate public inquiry by the North Ossetian parliament (headed by Kesayev) concluded on 29 November 2005 that both local and federal law enforcement mishandled the situation.


title: Beslan school siege

text: On 26 June 2007, 89 relatives of victims lodged a joint complaint against Russia with the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). The applicants say their rights were violated both during the hostage-taking and the trials that followed. The case was brought by over 400 Russians.


title: Beslan school siege

text: In an April 2017 judgement that supported the prosecutors, the court deemed that Russia's failure to act on "sufficient" evidence about a likely attack on a North Ossetia school had violated the "Right to Life" guaranteed by the European Convention on Human Rights. The court stated the error was made worse by the Russian use of "indiscriminate force". Result were published in April 2017, and found that Russian actions in using tank cannons, flame-throwers and grenade launchers "contributed to the casualties among the hostages", and had "not been compatible with the requirement under Article 2 that lethal force be used "no more than [is] absolutely necessary". The report also said that "The authorities had been in possession of sufficiently specific information of a planned terrorist attack in the area, linked to an educational institution", "nevertheless, not enough had been done to disrupt the terrorists meeting and preparing", or to warn schools or the public.


title: Beslan school siege

text: The ECHR court in Strasbourg ordered Russia to pay €2.9m in damages and €88,000 in legal costs. The Court's findings were rejected by the Russian Government. Although obligated to accept the ruling because it is a signatory of the European Convention on Human Rights, the Kremlin called the ruling "absolutely unacceptable". The Russian government challenged it in a higher chamber: it argued that several of the court's conclusions were "not backed up", but ultimately agreed to the ruling after the complaints were rejected by the Strasbourg-based court.


title: Beslan school siege

text: In opposition to the coverage on foreign television news channels (such as CNN and the BBC), the crisis was not broadcast live by the three major state-owned Russian television networks. The two main state-owned broadcasters, Channel One and Rossiya, did not interrupt their regular programming following the school seizure. After explosions and gunfire started on the third day, NTV Russia shifted away from the scenes of mayhem to broadcast a World War II soap opera. According to the "Ekho Moskvy" ("Echo of Moscow") radio station, 92% of the people polled said that Russian TV channels concealed parts of information.


title: Beslan school siege

text: Russian state-controlled television only reported official information about the number of hostages during the course of the crisis. The figure of 354 people was persistently given, initially reported by Lev Dzugayev (the press secretary of Dzasokhov) and Valery Andreyev (the chief of the republican FSB). It was later claimed that Dzugayev only disseminated information given to him by "Russian presidential staff who were located in Beslan from September 1". Torshin laid the blame squarely at Andreyev, for whom he reserved special scorn.


title: Beslan school siege

text: The deliberately false figure had grave consequences for the treatment of the hostages by their angered captors (the hostage-takers were reported saying, "Maybe we should kill enough of you to get down to that number") and contributed to the declaration of a "hunger strike". One inquiry has suggested that it may have prompted the militants to kill the group of male hostages shot on the first day. The government disinformation also sparked incidents of violence by the local residents, aware of the real numbers, against the members of Russian and foreign media.


title: Beslan school siege

text: On 8 September 2004, several leading Russian and international human-rights organisations – including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Memorial, and Moscow Helsinki Group – issued a joint statement in which they pointed out the responsibility that Russian authorities bore in disseminating false information:


title: Beslan school siege

text: We are also seriously concerned with the fact that authorities concealed the true scale of the crisis by, "inter alia", misinforming Russian society about the number of hostages. We call on Russian authorities to conduct a comprehensive investigation into the circumstances of the Beslan events which should include an examination of how authorities informed the whole society and the families of the hostages. We call on making the results of such an investigation public."


title: Beslan school siege

text: The Moscow daily tabloid "Moskovskij Komsomolets" ran a rubric headlined "Chronicle of Lies", detailing various initial reports put out by government officials about the hostage taking, which later turned out to be false.


title: Beslan school siege

text: The late "Novaya Gazeta" journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who had negotiated during the 2002 Moscow siege, was twice prevented by the authorities from boarding a flight. When she eventually succeeded, she fell into a coma after being poisoned aboard an aeroplane bound for Rostov-on-Don.


title: Beslan school siege

text: According to the report by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), several correspondents were detained or otherwise harassed after arriving in Beslan (including Russians Anna Gorbatova and Oksana Semyonova from "Novye Izvestia", Madina Shavlokhova from "Moskovskij Komsomolets", Elena Milashina from "Novaya Gazeta", and Simon Ostrovskiy from "The Moscow Times"). Several foreign journalists were also briefly detained, including a group of journalists from the Polish "Gazeta Wyborcza", French "Libération", and British "The Guardian". Many foreign journalists were exposed to pressure from the security forces and materials were confiscated from TV crews ZDF and ARD (Germany), AP Television News (USA), and Rustavi 2 (Georgia). The crew of Rustavi 2 was arrested; the Georgian Minister of Health said that the correspondent Nana Lezhava, who had been kept for five days in the Russian pre-trial detention centers, had been poisoned with dangerous psychotropic drugs (like Politkovskaya, Lezhava had passed out after being given a cup of tea). The crew from another Georgian TV channel, Mze, was expelled from Beslan.


title: Beslan school siege

text: Raf Shakirov, chief editor of the Russia's leading newspaper, "Izvestia", was forced to resign after criticism by the major shareholders of both style and content of the issue of 4 September 2004. In contrast to the less emotional coverage by other Russian newspapers, "Izvestia" had featured large pictures of dead or injured hostages. It also expressed doubts about the government's version of events.


title: Beslan school siege

text: The video tape made by the hostage-takers and given to Ruslan Aushev on the second day was declared by the officials as being "blank". Aushev himself did not watch the tape before he handed it to government agents. A fragment of tape shot by the hostage-takers was shown on Russian NTV television several days after the crisis. Another fragment of a tape shot by the hostage-takers was acquired by media and publicised in January 2005.


title: Beslan school siege

text: In July 2007, the Mothers of Beslan asked the FSB to declassify video and audio archives on Beslan, saying there should be no secrets in the investigation. They did not receive any official answer to this request. However, the Mothers received an anonymous video, which they disclosed saying it might prove that the Russian security forces started the massacre by firing rocket-propelled grenades on the besieged building. The film had been kept secret by the authorities for nearly three years before being officially released by the Mothers on 4 September 2007. The graphic film apparently shows the prosecutors and military experts surveying the unexploded shrapnel-based bombs of the militants and structural damage in the school in Beslan shortly after the massacre. Footage shows a large hole in the wall of the sports hall, with a man saying, "The hole in the wall is not from this [kind of] explosion. Apparently someone fired [there]", adding that many victims bear no sign of shrapnel wounds. In another scene filmed next morning, a uniformed investigator points out that most of the IEDs in the school actually did not go off, and then points out a hole in the floor which he calls a "puncture of an explosive character".


title: Beslan school siege

text: In general, the criticism was rejected by the Russian government. President Vladimir Putin specifically dismissed the foreign criticism as Cold War mentality and said that the West wants to "pull the strings so that Russia won't raise its head."


title: Beslan school siege

text: The Russian government defended the use of tanks and other heavy weaponry, arguing that it was used only after surviving hostages escaped from the school. However, this contradicts the eyewitness accounts, including by the reporters and former hostages. According to the survivors and other witnesses, many hostages were seriously wounded and could not possibly escape by themselves, while others were kept by the terrorists as human shields and moved through the building.


title: Beslan school siege

text: Deputy Prosecutor General of Russia Nikolai Shepel, acting as deputy prosecutor at the trial of the sole surviving attacker, found no fault with the security forces in handling the siege, "According to the conclusions of the investigation, the expert commission did not find any violations that could be responsible for the harmful consequences." Shepel acknowledged that commandos fired flamethrowers, but said this could not have sparked the fire that caused most of the deaths; he also said that the troops did not use napalm during the attack.


title: Beslan school siege

text: To address doubts, in 2005 Putin launched a Duma parliamentary investigation led by Alexander Torshin, resulting in the report which criticised the federal government only indirectly and instead put blame for "a whole number of blunders and shortcomings" on local authorities. The findings of the federal and the North Ossetian commissions differed widely in many main aspects.


title: Beslan school siege

text: In 2005, previously unreleased documents by the national commission in Moscow were made available to "Der Spiegel". According to the paper, "instead of calling for self-criticism in the wake of the disaster, the commission recommended the Russian government to crack down harder."


title: Beslan school siege

text: Five Ossetian and Ingush police officers were tried in the local courts; all of them were subsequently amnestied or acquitted in 2007. As of December 2009, none of the Russian federal officials suffered consequences in connection with the Beslan events.


title: Beslan school siege

text: Nur-Pashi Kulayev, the sole survivor of the 32 attackers, claimed that attacking a school and targeting mothers and young children was not merely coincidental, but was deliberately designed for maximum outrage with the purpose of igniting a wider war in the Caucasus. According to Kulayev, the attackers hoped that the mostly Orthodox Ossetians would attack their mostly Muslim Ingush and Chechen neighbours to seek revenge, encouraging ethnic and religious hatred and strife throughout the North Caucasus. North Ossetia and Ingushetia had previously been involved in a brief but bloody conflict in 1992 over disputed land in the North Ossetian Prigorodny District, leaving up to 1,000 dead and some 40,000 to 60,000 displaced persons, mostly Ingush. Indeed, shortly after the Beslan massacre, 3,000 people demonstrated in Vladikavkaz calling for revenge against the ethnic Ingush.


title: Beslan school siege

text: The expected backlash against neighbouring nations failed to materialise on a massive scale. In one noted incident, a group of ethnic Ossetian soldiers led by a Russian officer detained two Chechen Spetsnaz soldiers and executed one of them. In July 2007, the office of the presidential envoy for the Southern Federal District Dmitry Kozak announced that a North Ossetian armed group engaged in abductions as retaliation for the Beslan school hostage-taking. FSB Lieutenant Colonel Alikhan Kalimatov, sent from Moscow to investigate these cases, was shot dead by unidentified gunmen in September 2007.


title: Beslan school siege

text: In September 2005, the self-proclaimed faith healer and miracle-maker Grigory Grabovoy promised he could resurrect the murdered children. Grabovoy was arrested and indicted of fraud in April 2006, amidst the accusations that he was being used by the government as a tool to discredit the Mothers of Beslan group.


title: Beslan school siege

text: In January 2008, the Voice of Beslan group, which in the previous year had been court-ordered to disband, was charged by Russian prosecutors with "extremism" for their appeals in 2005 to the European Parliament to help establish an international investigation. This was soon followed with other charges, some of them relating to the 2007 court incident. As of February 2008, the group was charged in total of four different criminal cases.


title: Beslan school siege

text: Russian Patriarch Alexius II's plans to build an Orthodox church as part of the Beslan monument caused a serious conflict between the Orthodox Church and the leadership of the Russian Muslims in 2007. Beslan victims organisations also spoke against the project, and many in Beslan want the ruins of the school to be preserved, opposing the government plan to demolish them.


title: Beslan school siege

text: The attack at Beslan was met with international abhorrence and universal condemnation. Countries and charities around the world donated to funds set up to assist the families and children that were involved in the Beslan crisis.


title: Beslan school siege

text: At the end of 2004, the International Foundation For Terror Act Victims had raised over $1.2 million with a goal of $10 million. The Israeli government offered help in rehabilitating freed hostages, and during Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov's visit to China in November 2005, the Chinese Health Ministry announced that they were sending doctors to Beslan, and offered free medical care to any of the victims who still needed treatment. The then mayor of Croatia's capital Zagreb, Vlasta Pavić, offered free vacations to the Adriatic Sea to the Beslan children.


title: Beslan school siege

text: On 1 September 2005, UNICEF marked the first anniversary of the Beslan school tragedy by calling on all adults to shield children from war and conflict.


title: Beslan school siege

text: Maria Sharapova and many other female Russian tennis players wore black ribbons during the 2004 US Open in memory of the tragedy.


title: Miguel Díaz-Canel

text: Miguel Mario Díaz-Canel y Bermúdez (; born 20 April 1960) also known as MADCB, is a politician and engineer who is the third first secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba. Díaz-Canel succeeds the brothers Fidel and Raúl Castro, making him the first non-Castro leader of Cuba since the revolution. Díaz-Canel's leadership thus represents a non-dynastic form of succession for the party as well as for the state, and the end of Castro leadership in Cuba.


title: Miguel Díaz-Canel

text: Díaz-Canel has been a member of the Politburo of the Communist Party since 2003, and served as Minister of Higher Education from 2009 to 2012. He was promoted to the post of Vice President of the Council of Ministers (Deputy Prime Minister) in 2012. A year later, in 2013, he was elected as First Vice President of the Council of State. He succeeded Raúl Castro as the President of the Council of State in 2018; in December 2019 the office would evolve into President of the Republic. On 19 April 2021 Díaz-Canel assumed the reins of the Communist Party of Cuba as well, when he replaced Raúl Castro as First Secretary.


title: Miguel Díaz-Canel

text: On 11 July 2021 he gave a combat order to Communist Cubans to fight against the opposition (Movimiento San Isidro).


title: Miguel Díaz-Canel

text: Díaz-Canel was born on 20 April 1960 in Placetas, Villa Clara, to Aída Bermúdez, a schoolteacher, and Miguel Díaz-Canel, a mechanical plant worker in Santa Clara, Cuba. He is of direct paternal Spanish (Asturian) descent; his great-grandfather Ramón Díaz-Canel left Castropol, Asturias (Spain) for Havana in the late 19th century.


title: Miguel Díaz-Canel

text: He graduated from Central University of Las Villas in 1982 as an electronics engineer and thereupon joined the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces. Beginning in April 1985, he taught engineering at his alma mater. In 1987, he completed an international mission in Nicaragua as First Secretary of the Young Communist League of Villa Clara.


title: Miguel Díaz-Canel

text: In 1993, Díaz-Canel started work with the Communist Party of Cuba and a year later was elected First Secretary of the Provincial Party Committee of Villa Clara Province (a top position higher than a governor). He gained a reputation for competence in this post, during which time it is reported that he supported LGBT rights at a time when many in the province frowned upon homosexuality. In 2003, he was elected to the same position in Holguín Province. In the same year, he was co-opted as a member of the Politburo of the Communist Party of Cuba.


title: Miguel Díaz-Canel

text: Díaz-Canel was appointed Minister of Higher Education in May 2009, a position that he held until 22 March 2012, when he became Vice President of the Council of Ministers (deputy prime minister). In 2013 he additionally became First Vice President of the Council of State. As First Vice President of the Council of State, Díaz-Canel acted as deputy to the President, Raúl Castro.


title: Miguel Díaz-Canel

text: In 2018, the 86-year-old Castro stepped down from the presidency, though he retained the most powerful position of First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba and the commander-in-chief of the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces. On 18 April 2018, Díaz-Canel was selected as the only candidate to succeed Castro as president. He was confirmed by a vote of the National Assembly on 19 April and sworn in on the same day. Policy experts expected that he would pursue cautious reform of his predecessors' communist economic policies, while preserving the country's social structure. He is the first president born after the 1959 Cuban Revolution and the first since 1976 not to be a member of the Castro family.


title: Miguel Díaz-Canel

text: He received a visit from Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro just two days after his inauguration. He met with Maduro again in May 2018 in Caracas, during his first official foreign visit as head of state. In his first multinational political trip since becoming president, Díaz-Canel traveled in November 2018 to visit all of Cuba's Eurasian allies. Diplomatic meetings were held in Russia, North Korea, China, Vietnam, and Laos. Brief stopovers in the United Kingdom and France also included meetings with British parliamentarians and French leaders. In March 2019, Díaz-Canel and his wife hosted Charles, Prince of Wales and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall in Havana as the first British royals to visit the island.


title: Miguel Díaz-Canel

text: In October 2019, Diaz-Canel became the President of the Republic of Cuba, an office that was recreated that February after a series of constitutional reforms were approved in a constitutional referendum. This office replaced the one he had held since April of the previous year, which was the President of the Council of State, which was previously the head of state of Cuba. The position of President of the Council of State became a less important position and is now carried out by Esteban Lazo Hernández in his authority as the President of the National Assembly of People's Power. Diaz-Canel's reforms among other things, limited the presidency to two consecutive five-year terms and banned discrimination based on gender, gender identity or sexual orientation.


title: Miguel Díaz-Canel

text: His administration has been controversial for its suppression of dissent, particularly surrounding the 11th of July protests triggered by the worsening of the COVID-19 pandemic, and his suggestion to combat the country's food crisis with pizza, guarapo and lemonade, the government's decision to change the currency system and the general scarcity of basic necessities such as food or medicine. Díaz-Canel was particularly criticised for his apparently confrontational words amidst the protests, having been quoted as saying: "The order of combat has been given - into the streets, revolutionaries!"


title: Miguel Díaz-Canel

text: On 19 April 2021, he officially became the First Secretary of the Communist Party, the most powerful position in Cuba, following the resignation of Raúl Castro. He is the first non-Castro to be in such position since the Cuban revolution of 1959. BBC News stated that Díaz-Canel is loyal to the Castros' ideologies.


title: Miguel Díaz-Canel

text: Díaz-Canel has two children from his marriage to his first wife, Marta Villanueva, which ended in divorce. He currently resides with his second wife, Lis Cuesta.


title: Miguel Díaz-Canel

text: On 23 March 2021, Díaz-Canel obtained a PhD in technical sciences, defending a thesis entitled "Government Management System Based on Science and Innovation for Sustainable Development in Cuba."


title: Chicken tikka masala

text: Chicken tikka masala is a dish consisting of roasted marinated chicken chunks (chicken tikka) in a spiced sauce. The sauce is usually creamy and orange-coloured. The dish was popularised by cooks from South Asia living in Great Britain and is offered at restaurants around the world.


title: Chicken tikka masala

text: Chicken tikka masala is composed of chicken tikka, boneless chunks of chicken marinated in spices and yogurt that are roasted in an oven, served in a creamy sauce. A tomato and coriander sauce is common, but no recipe for chicken tikka masala is standard; a survey found that of 48 different recipes, the only common ingredient was chicken. The sauce usually includes tomatoes (frequently as purée), cream, coconut cream and a masala spice mix. The sauce and chicken pieces may be coloured orange using foodstuffs such as turmeric, paprika, tomato purée or with food dye. Chicken tikka masala is similar to butter chicken, both in the method of creation and appearance.


title: Chicken tikka masala

text: The origin of the dish is not certain, but many sources attribute it to the South Asian community in Great Britain; some sources also cite Glasgow as the city of origin.


title: Chicken tikka masala

text: Chicken tikka masala may derive from butter chicken, a popular dish in the northern Indian subcontinent. The "Multicultural Handbook of Food, Nutrition and Dietetics" credits its creation to Bangladeshi migrant chefs in Britain in the 1960s. They developed and served a number of new inauthentic "Indian" dishes, including chicken tikka masala.


title: Chicken tikka masala

text: Historians of ethnic food Peter and Colleen Grove discuss multiple claims regarding the origin of chicken tikka masala, concluding that the dish "was most certainly invented in Britain, probably by a Bangladeshi chef." They suggest that "the shape of things to come may have been a recipe for Shahi Chicken Masala in Mrs Balbir Singh’s "Indian Cookery" published in 1961."


title: Chicken tikka masala

text: Another explanation is that it originated in a restaurant in Glasgow, Scotland. This version recounts how a British Pakistani chef, Ali Ahmed Aslam, proprietor of a restaurant in Glasgow, invented chicken tikka masala by improvising a sauce made from a tin of condensed tomato soup, and spices.


title: Chicken tikka masala

text: Chef Anita Jaisinghani, a correspondent in the "Houston Chronicle", wrote that "the most likely story is that the modern version was created during the early ’70s by an enterprising Indian chef near London" who used Campbell's tomato soup. This is disputed by author Jo Monroe, who claims that this story was invented by the founder of a London restaurant "to entertain journalists".


title: Chicken tikka masala

text: Rahul Verma, a food critic who writes for "The Hindu" newspaper, claims: "It's basically a Punjabi dish not more than 40–50 years old and must be an accidental discovery which has had periodical improvisations."


title: Chicken tikka masala

text: According to a 2012 survey of 2,000 people in Britain, it was the country's second-most popular foreign dish to cook, after Chinese stir fry.


title: Chicken tikka masala

text: In 2001, British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook mentioned the dish in a speech acclaiming the benefits of Britain's multiculturalism, declaring:


title: Diriliş: Ertuğrul

text: Diriliş: Ertuğrul, translated as Resurrection: Ertuğrul, is a Turkish historical fiction and adventure television series produced by Mehmet Bozdağ for TRT, starring Engin Altan Düzyatan as Ertuğrul Bey. The show is set in the 13th century and is based on the life of Ertuğrul, the father of Osman I, the founder of the Ottoman Empire.


title: Diriliş: Ertuğrul

text: The series was filmed in Riva, a village in the Beykoz district of Istanbul, Turkey, and premiered on TRT 1 in Turkey on 10 December 2014. The show aired for five seasons until 29 May 2019. It was written by Mehmet Bozdağ and directed by Metin Günay.


title: Diriliş: Ertuğrul

text: The show has been well received in Turkey and other countries such as Pakistan and Azerbaijan, although several countries in the Arab world have banned the show and fatwas have been issued against it. The show has also been criticised for furthering a perceived political agenda for the government of Turkey.


title: Diriliş: Ertuğrul

text: Ertrugrul was a 13th century Turkic Muslim nomad warrior from Central Asia. Surrounded by the Mongols to the east and the Crusaders and Byzantines to the west; like other Turkic tribes, Ertrugrul's tribe too was pushed west by the Mongols. The Ertrugrul's Turkmen did fight for a homeland, which was established by Ertrugrul's son Osman as the Ottoman Empire. Ertrugrul TV serial attempts to show case a vivid imagination of a 13th-century Turkic Asian community and Muslim culture.


title: Diriliş: Ertuğrul

text: Süleyman Şah, Bey of the Kayı sends his son, Ertuğrul, to ask for land from the Emir of Aleppo. This is made almost impossible when the Kayı are put in a series of problems with the Templars after saving Şehzade Numan, Halime Sultan, and Şehzade Yiğit because of the traitor in the Emir's palace, , who works for the Templars but is later killed by Ertuğrul and the truth is shown to the Emir. A problem also arises with Kurdoğlu Bey, Süleyman Şah's adoptive brother, who seeks his brother's Beylik with the help of Selcan Hatun, Ertuğrul's adopted sister and sister-in-law, who wants revenge from Süleyman Şah as he killed her treacherous father, . Ertuğrul, who loves Halime, marries her after much difficulty. Selcan's husband, Gündoğdu, grows angry regarding Ertuğrul's actions but eventually calms down and supports his brother. Towards the end of the season, Kurdoğlu is beheaded, Ertuğrul successfully defeats the Templars and captures their castle, and Selcan repents. This is followed by Süleyman Şah's death and the tribe's migration to Erzurum as part of Süleyman Şah's will before he died.


title: Diriliş: Ertuğrul

text: The Kayı, settled in Erzurum, seek refuge with the Dodurga after the Mongols, led by , massacre half their tribe. This leads to Ertuğrul facing Tuğtekin, his cousin, who is jealous of him along with Gündoğdu again who is misled by the big threat within the Dodurga; and her brother . Aytolun married Tuğtekin's father, , so that she could help Gümüştekin become the margrave of all the Turkmen tribes with the help of Emir Sadettin after killing Korkut. Only Selcan is aware of this threat and constantly attempts to warn Gündoğdu, who ignores her for her misdeeds in the past. Along with these schemes, Kocabaş, Tuğtekin's alp who works for Baycu Noyan, turns Tuğtekin against Ertuğrul making their relationship worse but is later killed by Ertuğrul, and his relations with Tuğtekin gradually improves. Aytolun and Gümüştekin are killed after their treachery is caught when Selcan's words are listened to and Korkut is killed. Noyan is supposedly killed by Ertuğrul after the death of Tuğtekin and the tribe is split between 1000 migrating to Ahlat with Gündoğdu and 400 migrating to Western Anatolia with Ertuğrul.


title: Diriliş: Ertuğrul

text: The poor Kayı newcomers face of the rich Çavdar trade-veterans. Although Ural isn't the Bey of his tribe, he seeks more and more power, becoming jealous of the Kayı whenever something good happens to the small tribe. Meanwhile, the Templars who have infiltrated Hanlı Pazar, led by , seek to kill Ertuğrul as he did to the Templars years back. Ertuğrul defeats Hancı Simon and conquers Hanlı Pazar, leaving Ural more jealous than ever. When Ural is accused of killing the Tekfur of Karacahisar, Andros, and causing problems for the Kayı, Ural is sentenced to death, however, he is saved by the devious Emir Sadettin. After the death of , the Çavdar Bey, and Ural's father, Ural seeks help from the new Tekfur of Karacahisar, , who wants to rid the Turks of the land, but is killed by Ertuğrul in an attempt to become the Bey of the Çavdar. When Vasilius attempts to ambush the Selçuk , he fails and is killed by Ertuğrul. Because of this, the Sultan makes Ertuğrul the Uç Bey angering Emir Sadettin, who vows to end Ertuğrul. At the end of the season, Ertuğrul falls into an ambush set by the new Tekfur of Karacahisar, Ares.


title: Diriliş: Ertuğrul

text: It is believed that Ertuğrul is dead despite the truth being that he is actually captured by some slave traders. Meanwhile, Emir Sadettin convinces , Ertuğrul's brother and the new Kayı Bey, into selling Hanlı Pazar and moving back to Gündoğdu's tribe but is stopped upon Ertuğrul's return and is forthwith banished. After Ertuğrul's son, , is kidnapped, Ertuğrul declares war against Karacahisar and is successful in conquering it. Following Ares' capture, Ertuğrul takes him to the Sultan and tells him to confess to the Sultan about Sadettin Köpek's misdeeds. The plan nearly works but Köpek is saved by the Sultan's wife, , and leads to an event turning Ares, later killed by Noyan, into a Muslim. Soon after that, the Sultan is poisoned to death and Köpek's increase in power in the palace creates problems for the new Sultan, Gıyaseddin. Gıyaseddin allies with Ertuğrul and with the help of Hüsamettin Karaca, Köpek is beheaded. Halime dies in childbirth, giving birth to Ertuğrul's third and youngest son - the prophesied Osman. After this, Ertuğrul faces the return of Noyan but is successful in defeating him and his devious sister, Alangoya, who attempted to Osman. Noyan prepares for a battle, historically known as the Battle of Köse Dağ, and the Kayı move to Söğüt.


title: Diriliş: Ertuğrul

text: After 10 years in Söğüt, in a Mongol-controlled Selçuk state, Ertuğrul faces many Mongol commanders including and Subutai, along with the Selçuk assassin working with the Mongols, . Beybolat is disguised with the name, Albastı, and he arrives following the death of his father, Umur Bey, Bey of the Umuroğlu tribe, who was sent to become the new tax collecter of Söğüt. Umur Bey was killed by the disgraced Byzantine commander, Dragos, disguised as Söğüt Zangoç (), who seeks to take over the town. Beybolat, who becomes his father's successor, and Dragos, who takes control over Lefke Castle after killing the innocent Tekfur Yannis, cause many problems for Ertuğrul including Beybolat's control over Söğüt for a while. , Beybolat's sister, is the only person in her family supporting justice; with her help, Ertuğrul, defeats and kills both Beybolat and Dragos. Following Beybolat's death, Ertuğrul faces Arikbuka, a feared Mongol spy and Alıncak's blood brother, along with the spy, Qiyat, who works for Hulagu against Berke, Ertuğrul's ally and the Han of the Golden Horde. The season ends with the death of Arikbuka and Qiyat along with Ertuğrul's marriage to İlbilge Hatun.


title: Diriliş: Ertuğrul

text: The series proceeds with "Kuruluş: Osman" which is situated after Ertuğrul goes to Konya and returns to the tribe. The new series began in November 2019 and focuses on Ertuğrul's son, Osman Bey, based on Osman I, the founder of the Ottoman Empire. It currently has three full seasons and is still ongoing as of 2022.


title: Diriliş: Ertuğrul

text: The series is written and produced by Mehmet Bozdağ and directed by Metin Günay. The theme music is by Alpay Göktekin. Broadcasting began in December 2014 on TRT 1 (Turkey).


title: Diriliş: Ertuğrul

text: The "Daily Sabah" reported TRT representative İbrahim Eren as claiming that the series aims to strengthen the national sentiment of Turkish people by "teaching the audience how the Turkish state came into existence, through a combination of history and quality entertainment."


title: Diriliş: Ertuğrul

text: Preparations for the first season began in February 2014. In five months, the stories and drawings were ready. Gambat from Mongolia had drawings made in three months. The teams started their work in May 2014. The decoration and art team consisted of sixty people and worked for 4 months for the first episode. 4000 square meters of fabric were used for costumes and décor. As for the choreography of the show, "Nomad", the special choreography crew of movies such as "The Expendables 2", "47 Ronin", and "Conan the Barbarian", from Kazakhstan, was invited to Turkey. The crew prepared special choreographies for actors, horses, and other scenes. The cast took riding, sword fighting and archery lessons for 3 months. There were 25 horses on the set, attended by a veterinarian, who specially trained them. All are maintained on a horse farm in Riva. A special area similar to a zoo (but on a smaller scale) was created for all the animals which appear in the show, which include gazelles, sheep, goats, nightingales and partridges. The shooting time of the first episode was about a month. A total of 5000 people were cast for all 5 seasons of the show.


title: Diriliş: Ertuğrul

text: For the series, around 1800 costumes and thousands of war supplies and accessories were made from scratch. The TV series is a milestone in Turkey with respect to its administration of art. Copper and other metallic accessories are accumulated from various parts of Turkey. Nearly everything all over Turkey was 'confiscated', from jewellery to a piece of cloth. Wooden materials were made by hand, one by one.


title: Diriliş: Ertuğrul

text: Season one was filmed around Beykoz and Riva in Istanbul. "Diriliş: Ertuğrul" set up two plateaus for Riva and Beykoz Kundura Factory for the first season. The plateau in Riva was erected on a total area of 40,000 m with 35 tents built according to the original. In the Beykoz Kundura factory, Aleppo, Aleppo Palace, supply room, guest rooms, corridors, dungeons, Kara Toygar's room, the Seljuk pavilion, temple halls, and rooms, lodges, and tent interiors were built on a closed area of 6,000 m. In the Kundura factory, the Aleppo Bazaar, the interior of the fortress, the interior of the tent by Süleyman Şah, the dungeon, the corridor, and the altar of the temple were built on an open area of 5,000 m.


title: Diriliş: Ertuğrul

text: The was the most watched Turkish television episode on the day of its release. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, president of Turkey, visited the set with his family more than once. The series has been called a Turkish "Game of Thrones", and fans include Venezuela's president Nicolás Maduro and the queen of Malaysia Tunku Azizah Aminah Maimunah Iskandariah.


title: Diriliş: Ertuğrul

text: The series is one of Turkey's most successful television exports, and echoes with the message of Erdoğan and his party. According to professor Burak Ozcetin, "They are, in a way, rewriting the Ottoman history for the current Turkish public."


title: Diriliş: Ertuğrul

text: Along with Turkey, the series is popular in Azerbaijan, due to a perceived common heritage. The series has attracted audience from several other countries, especially those with large Turkish or Muslim populations.


title: Diriliş: Ertuğrul

text: The Prime Minister of Pakistan, Imran Khan, praised the show publicly and recommended people in Pakistan to watch it. He requested the state-owned Pakistan Television Corporation (PTV) to dub the Turkish series into Urdu and broadcast it on TV. PTV secured television rights for the series from TRT, and the first episode was eventually aired in Pakistan on the first day of Ramadan (24 April) on PTV Home in 2020.


title: Diriliş: Ertuğrul

text: The show is called "Ertugrul Ghazi" in Pakistan, and was noted to be a major success there particularly due to Khan's recommendation, and also partly due to the COVID-19 pandemic quarantine. PTV's YouTube channel for the series had gained over 5 million subscribers as of June 2020. According to PTV, the series in Urdu had acquired a viewership of over 130 million people as of mid-May, and as of September, its subscribers crossed 10 million. 25 per cent of the series YouTube audience overall in the world is from Pakistan. It has been very successful in Pakistan (ratings were even better than in Turkey).


title: Diriliş: Ertuğrul

text: Several of the actors expressed gratitude for the attention from Pakistani fans, Engin Altan Düzyatan and Esra Bilgiç adding that they would like to visit the country. In December 2020, the Turkish embassy in Pakistan announced that Düzyatan will be visiting Pakistan. He arrived in Lahore and visited historical Lahori sites including Badshahi Mosque on his short trip.


title: Diriliş: Ertuğrul

text: Turkish Ambassador to Bangladesh Mustafa Osman Turan said that the Turkish TV series plays a significant role in bringing the people of the two fraternal countries together. "People of Bangladesh learn about Turkey's history, culture, and norms through Turkish series, and thus a cultural bond is developing between the people of the two Muslim countries," he added.


title: Diriliş: Ertuğrul

text: The series is also quite popular with Indian Muslims and amongst Kashmiri Muslims in particular in Jammu and Kashmir, where people see it as an inspiration in the Kashmir conflict despite internet shutdowns. A Kashmiri public relations professional said "Every Kashmiri must watch it. A small tribe of 2,000 people triumph. It's inspirational. If you have a goal and the will to achieve it, nothing can come in your way." Abhinav Pandya, author, compares "Diriliş: Ertuğrul"'s success in India with that of the Israeli drama "Fauda", saying that "Just as Fauda fandom signals the shift of India's influencers towards a more militant and exclusionary nationalism, the Ertugrul craze is a signpost written for the alienation of many of India's 180 million Muslims from that dominant political culture and their search for solidarity elsewhere. " According to Renuka Narayanan while tv series provides interesting window into imagined Muslim culture of 13 century, the serial does not seem to be innocent enough. Narayanan says the serial amounts to be state-endorsed vigorous promotion of Islamic revivalism by the Turkish government. Episodes are peppered with the word ‘kafir’ or ‘infidel’. Ertrugrul's aide Bamsi, otherwise a captivating character, jokes ad nauseam about killing non-Muslims, and Ertrugrul constantly declares his ambition of making the whole world Muslim. His enemies, be they Christian or Mongol, are portrayed as amoral and cruel.  The script even takes a subtle dig at Iranians by naming a slimy trader-spy ‘Afrosiyab’ after a Persian hero. Narayanan contemplates re-mosqueing of Hagia Sophia is a strong influence of reel life on real life, bemoaned by writers like Orhan Pamuk and moderates in Turkish society.


title: Diriliş: Ertuğrul

text: On 10 February 2020, Diriliş: Ertuğrul was banned in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Egypt's Dar al-Ifta al-Misriyyah announced it was forbidden to watch the series. It also targeted Turkey's President Erdoğan in a statement, stating that his intention was to restore the Ottoman Empire in the Middle East and restore sovereignty over the Arab countries that had previously been under Ottoman rule. Despite the ban, the series remained quite popular in these countries.


title: Diriliş: Ertuğrul

text: Some journalists have commented on the series political agenda. Hüseyin Topel says that "Diriliş: Ertuğrul" is more effective than any other TRT series at conveying aspects of the government agenda, and that the AKP government messages in the series increased as the show grew more popular. Selim Aydın also names the series as one criticized for being a mouthpiece of the government. The show blurs the difference between entertainment and state-sanctioned propaganda, according to Josh Carney in a study published in "Review of Middle East Studies"; he points at a four-minute commercial that TRT (and a private pro-government channel, A Haber) ran to promote the 2017 Turkish constitutional referendum, presenting Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan as a successor to a list of historic Turkish leaders including Ertuğrul, using the music from the show. Unlike other similar shows, such as "The Magnificent Century" (which ran on Turkish TV from 2011 to 2014 and focuses on Suleiman the Magnificent), it has female characters that are "equal partners" to the men in the show.


title: Diriliş: Ertuğrul

text: Bozdağ has noted that historical records from the period are scarce. Historical inconsistencies include:


title: Seattle Kraken

text: The Seattle Kraken are a professional ice hockey team based in Seattle. The Kraken compete in the National Hockey League (NHL) as a member of the Pacific Division in the Western Conference and began play during the league's 2021–22 season. They play their home games at Climate Pledge Arena.


title: Seattle Kraken

text: In December 2018, the NHL approved a proposal by Seattle Hockey Partners to grant an expansion franchise to the city of Seattle. In July 2020, the Kraken's name and branding were revealed. The Kraken are the first professional hockey team to play in Seattle since the Seattle Totems of the Western Hockey League played their last game in 1975, and the first Seattle hockey team to compete for the Stanley Cup since the Seattle Metropolitans, who won the Cup in 1917 and folded in 1924. On October 26, 2021, the team raised a banner commemorating the 1917 title team.


title: Seattle Kraken

text: The NHL Board of Governors voted unanimously to approve Seattle's expansion team on December 4, 2018, to begin play in the 2021–22 season as a member of the Pacific Division in the Western Conference. As a result, the Arizona Coyotes were shifted from the Pacific Division to the Central Division to balance out the four divisions at eight teams each. The organization hired Ron Francis as their general manager to initiate operations for the team.


title: Seattle Kraken

text: On July 23, 2020, the franchise announced their team name, the Seattle Kraken, as well as their team colors, branding, and home jersey. The team's name comes from the mythical kraken of Scandinavian folklore and its resemblance to the native giant Pacific octopus, which is found in the waters of the Puget Sound, near Seattle. On April 30, 2021, the franchise paid the final installment of the $650 million expansion fee, making the Seattle Kraken the 32nd team of the NHL.


title: Seattle Kraken

text: On June 24, 2021, the organization hired Dave Hakstol as their inaugural head coach. An expansion draft was held on July 21, 2021, in a similar manner to a previous expansion draft held in 2017 for the Vegas Golden Knights, who were themselves exempt from the 2021 expansion draft.


title: Seattle Kraken

text: During the 2021 preseason, the Kraken played their three home games in the home arenas of three Washington state Western Hockey League teams, the Spokane Chiefs, Everett Silvertips, and Seattle Thunderbirds. On October 11, the Kraken named Mark Giordano the team's first captain. They played their first regular season game on October 12, 2021, a 4–3 loss to the Vegas Golden Knights. Ryan Donato scored the team's first goal. The Kraken's first win came in their second game on October 14, when they defeated the Nashville Predators 4–3.


title: Seattle Kraken

text: Giordano played his 1,000th career NHL game for the Kraken on March 5, 2022, becoming the first player to reach 1,000 career games as a member of the team. The team honored him at the Kraken's next home game, shortly before trading him to the Toronto Maple Leafs. The Kraken finished their inaugural season in last place in the Pacific Division with a 27–49–6 record and 60 points.


title: Seattle Kraken

text: The team plays home games at Climate Pledge Arena. The arena, at Seattle Center, is a $930 million redevelopment of the former KeyArena and Seattle Center Coliseum. Amazon.com bought the naming rights to Climate Pledge Arena and chose to name the venue after its environmental goals.


title: Seattle Kraken

text: The team's primary practice facility, named the Kraken Community Iceplex, is located at Northgate Station (formerly Northgate Mall) and opened in September 2021. The facility has three rinks and is open to the public.


title: Seattle Kraken

text: The Kraken's three home preseason games prior to the 2021–22 season were held at Spokane Arena, Angel of the Winds Arena in Everett, and the accesso ShoWare Center in Kent, which are all home to Western Hockey League (WHL) teams. Tickets were sold by the host WHL teams.


title: Seattle Kraken

text: The Kraken played their first home game at Climate Pledge Arena on October 23, 2021, a 4–2 loss to the Vancouver Canucks. Vince Dunn scored the first goal in the arena's history for Seattle. They won their first game in the arena on October 26, 2021, a 5–1 victory against the Montreal Canadiens. Their first shutout win at home was a 3–0 victory over the San Jose Sharks on April 29, 2022, the final home game of the inaugural season.


title: Seattle Kraken

text: The Kraken use the horn from the MV "Hyak" ferry boat as their goal horn. At the first two home games, the "Hyak"'s horn was not yet functional, so the team played a recording of it. The team plays the Nirvana song "Lithium" after every Kraken goal at home.


title: Seattle Kraken

text: After their first win at home against the Montreal Canadiens on October 26, the Kraken featured a new postgame tradition during the "Three Stars of the Game" ceremony. Instead of the honored players tossing conventional souvenir pucks or sticks to the fans, they threw a plush stuffed toy sockeye salmon into the crowd to mimic Seattle's Pike Place Market fish toss and what the Northwest wild-caught salmon represents to the state of Washington.


title: Seattle Kraken

text: Rod Masters, the organist from the 1977 film "Slap Shot", became the organist for the Kraken starting with the team's January 1, 2022 home game. As Climate Pledge Arena does not have an organ, Masters plays music using electronic keyboards.


title: Seattle Kraken

text: The Kraken first unveiled its inaugural uniforms on July 22, 2021. Deep sea blue served as the base color with ice blue, boundless blue, shadow blue and red as the accent colors.


title: Seattle Kraken

text: The Kraken unveiled its "Reverse Retro" uniform in the 2022–23 season, featuring an ice blue base with deep sea blue striping. The design was a callback to the Seattle Ironmen, a defunct Pacific Coast Hockey League team that existed in the 1940s.


title: Seattle Kraken

text: Buoy, a sea troll, is the Kraken's mascot. He is said to be a nephew of the Fremont Troll. Buoy was introduced prior to a preseason game against the Canucks on October 1, 2022, at Climate Pledge Arena. The Kraken had intended to introduce Buoy around Christmas during the 2021–22 season, but due to game postponements related to the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant, the team decided to wait until prior to the 2022–23 season instead. Reaction to Buoy's debut was polarized, with many observers expressing a strong like or dislike for the mascot. On his "Spittin' Chiclets" podcast, Paul Bissonnette called Buoy "the ugliest mascot of all time".


title: Seattle Kraken

text: During the 2021–22 season, in the absence of an official mascot, the Kraken promoted a "team dog" named Davy Jones. The dog, a four-month-old husky mix rescue dog introduced on January 17, 2022, socialized with fans at home games as he trained to be a therapy dog.


title: Seattle Kraken

text: Everett Fitzhugh serves as the team's primary radio play-by-play announcer. Fitzhugh had previously done play-by-play for the ECHL's Cincinnati Cyclones. He is the first full-time play-by-play announcer of African-American heritage in NHL history. Former NHL player and Vancouver Canucks broadcaster Dave Tomlinson serves as Fitzhugh's color analyst. Fitzhugh tested positive for COVID-19 prior to the Kraken's first regular-season road trip; on radio broadcasts, TV announcer John Forslund and veteran KJR broadcaster Ian Furness filled in on play-by-play duties.


title: Seattle Kraken

text: Kraken games are broadcast on 950 KJR, the flagship station of the Kraken Audio Network, with some games on 96.5 KJAQ. The Kraken Audio Network also includes the following stations outside Seattle:


title: Seattle Kraken

text: Kraken games are broadcast regionally on Root Sports Northwest for the team's first five seasons. Former Hartford Whalers and Carolina Hurricanes broadcaster John Forslund serves as the team's television play-by-play announcer. J. T. Brown is the Kraken's first television analyst. In August 2022, the team hired Eddie Olczyk to be a television analyst alongside Forslund and Brown. Olczyk will maintain his job at TNT as one of the lead analysts and will call Kraken hockey games as his schedule allows.


title: Seattle Kraken

text: Alison Lukan is a studio analyst for Root Sports Northwest who filled in for Brown for a few games during the 2021–22 season. Nick Olczyk joined Lukan as a television, radio, and mobile app contributor for the 2022–23 season.


title: Seattle Kraken

text: The telecast for the Kraken's February 17, 2022 game against the Winnipeg Jets had Fitzhugh on play-by-play and Brown on color commentary, comprising the first all-Black broadcast booth in NHL history.


title: Seattle Kraken

text: In their first season, the Kraken averaged a 0.96 Nielsen rating for games broadcast on Root Sports Northwest. By comparison, the Vegas Golden Knights averaged a 1.87 rating in their first season for games broadcast locally on AT&T Rocky Mountain.


title: Seattle Kraken

text: The Coachella Valley Firebirds, the American Hockey League (AHL) affiliate of the Kraken, are based in Palm Desert, California. Due to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and delays in building Acrisure Arena, the Firebirds will begin play in the 2022–23 season. Because Acrisure Arena is expected to be ready for hockey in December 2022, the Firebirds will play the early part of their 2022–23 season in the Seattle metropolitan area at Climate Pledge Arena.


title: Seattle Kraken

text: The Charlotte Checkers, the primary AHL affiliate of the Florida Panthers, also served as the AHL affiliate for the Kraken during the 2021–22 season due to the delay in the Kraken's AHL team. The Checkers, an independently owned AHL team, had been the affiliate of the Carolina Hurricanes while the Kraken's general manager Ron Francis was working for the Hurricanes.


title: Seattle Kraken

text: "This is a list of the seasons completed by the Kraken. For the full season-by-season history, see List of Seattle Kraken seasons".


title: Seattle Kraken

text: "GP = Games played, W = Wins, L = Losses, T = Ties, OTL = Overtime Losses, Pts = Points, GF = Goals for, GA = Goals against"


title: Seattle Kraken

text: The team is owned by Seattle Hockey Partners, an organization consisting of David Bonderman, Jerry Bruckheimer and Tod Leiweke. Minority owners of the Kraken include Chris Ackerley, Ted Ackerley, Jay Deutsch, Mitch Garber, Adrian Hanauer, Andy Jassy, Marshawn Lynch, Macklemore, Len Potter, Sam Slater, David Wright, and Jeff Wright.


title: Seattle Kraken

text: The Kraken have four player awards that are given after each season. The Kraken's most valuable player, as voted on by Seattle-area media, receives the Pete Muldoon Award. The player with the most mentions in the three stars of each Kraken home game, computed using a points system, wins the Three Stars of the Year Award. The Guyle Fielder Award goes to the teammate who best exemplifies "perseverence, hustle and dedication" as voted upon by their teammates and coaches. The Fan Favorite Award goes to a player who wins a fan vote.


title: Seattle Kraken

text: These are the top-ten point-scorers in franchise history. Figures are updated after each completed NHL regular season.


title: Seattle Kraken

text: "Note: Pos = Position; GP = Games played; G = Goals; A = Assists; Pts = Points; P/G = Points per game"


title: Black Mass (film)

text: Black Mass is a 2015 American biographical crime drama film about American mobster Whitey Bulger. Directed by Scott Cooper and written by Mark Mallouk and Jez Butterworth, it is based on Dick Lehr and Gerard O'Neill's 2001 book "Black Mass: The True Story of an Unholy Alliance Between the FBI and the Irish Mob". The film features an ensemble cast led by Johnny Depp as Bulger, alongside Joel Edgerton, Benedict Cumberbatch, Kevin Bacon, Jesse Plemons, Peter Sarsgaard, Dakota Johnson, and Corey Stoll.


title: Black Mass (film)

text: Principal photography of the film began on May 19, 2014, in Boston and wrapped on August 1, 2014. The film had its world premiere at the 72nd Venice International Film Festival and was released by Warner Bros. worldwide on September 18, 2015. It received generally positive reviews and grossed $99 million on a $53 million budget.


title: Black Mass (film)

text: In 1975, James "Whitey" Bulger, leader of the Winter Hill Gang, controls most organized crime within South Boston, along with his right-hand man Stephen Flemmi, newcomer Kevin Weeks, and callous hitman Johnny Martorano. Bulger lives with his longtime partner Lindsey Cyr and their young son Douglas.


title: Black Mass (film)

text: Bulger's supremacy is challenged by the North End-based Angiulo Brothers, a rival gang that is part of the New England Mafia family. FBI agent John Connolly returns to the area, having grown up in South Boston as a friend of Whitey and his brother, Massachusetts Senate President William "Billy" Bulger.


title: Black Mass (film)

text: After the Angiulo Brothers send a motorcycle-riding assassin who murders a Winter Hill soldier, Whitey becomes an informant for Connolly. Connolly believes he can infiltrate the Angiulo Brothers' organization with Whitey's help. Although Whitey hates the idea of being a rat, he understands the protection doing so would afford him, his gang, and his family. Douglas suffers from Reye syndrome, leading the devastated Lindsey to remove him from life support over Whitey's furious objections.


title: Black Mass (film)

text: Although Connolly is supported by his co-worker John Morris, their boss, Charles McGuire, is suspicious. Whitey increasingly exploits his status as an informant, using Connolly's "protection" as a cover for his crimes. When Connolly demands information on the Angiulos' racketeering locations, Whitey gets pictures of the rival gang's hideouts, allowing the FBI to plant wiretaps. The FBI arrests the Angiulos, thus eliminating the remaining opposition to Whitey's power. Blinded by his past, Connolly grows closer to Whitey and the gang and even invites them to his house for a cookout. His wife, Marianne, sees negative changes in her husband as his agent-informant relationship with Whitey grows, including accepting expensive gifts and money from the gang.


title: Black Mass (film)

text: An associate, Brian Halloran, fears for his own life and goes to the FBI to report Whitey's involvement, much to Connolly's displeasure. Connolly then tells Whitey of Halloran's accusation, thereby resulting in the murders of Halloran and an unnamed accomplice. Following his mother's death, Whitey's behavior becomes increasingly violent and unpredictable, deteriorating his informant relationship.


title: Black Mass (film)

text: When "bulldog" prosecutor Fred Wyshak is appointed the new assistant U. S. Attorney in Boston, Connolly attempts to make friends and perhaps divert his attention from Whitey. Still, Wyshak bluntly refuses and demands the FBI arrest him. John McIntyre, an informant within the Winter Hill Gang, informs on an attempt by Whitey to smuggle weapons for the IRA. The shipment is seized, and Whitey kills McIntyre after Connolly tips him off.


title: Black Mass (film)

text: Wyshak and McGuire investigate Connolly's management of Whitey's informant role and realize that most of the "tips" provided by Whitey were already obtained from other informants (that Bulger could've possibly killed since he was ironically known for killing "Rats"). Morris, disillusioned and fearing prosecution for his association with Connolly's activities, divulges Connolly's and Whitey's relationship to "The Boston Globe", and a front-page story exposes the FBI's links to organized crime. As Connolly, Flemmi, Weeks, and Martorano are arrested, Whitey gives Billy a final goodbye from a gas station pay phone before leaving Boston.


title: Black Mass (film)

text: A textual epilogue reveals Weeks received a five-year sentence, Martorano a twelve-year sentence, and Flemmi a life sentence, while Morris received immunity for his cooperation; Billy became Chancellor of the University of Massachusetts but resigned following the discovery that he was in touch with Whitey; Connolly was convicted of second-degree murder and received a forty-year sentence, and Whitey, after an anonymous tip led to his arrest on June 22, 2011, in Santa Monica, California, received two consecutive life sentences with an added five years.


title: Black Mass (film)

text: An idea for a film adaptation of "Black Mass: The True Story of an Unholy Alliance Between the FBI and the Irish Mob" garnered interest intermittently since 2000. Even before its published release, the book's film rights had already been sold to Miramax, when Harvey Weinstein was still part of the company. According to co-author Dick Lehr, Weinstein had never exercised the film option for unknown reasons, and the rights expired. At one point afterwards, in 2002, filmmaker Robert Greenwald had planned to adapt "Black Mass" into a 4-hour miniseries for USA Network, but the project was never developed. Eventually in 2006, film producer Brian Oliver acquired the film rights for "Black Mass", and was set to produce the adaptation with CP Production partners Michael Cerenzie and Christine Peters.


title: Black Mass (film)

text: After Oliver's acquisition, Jim Sheridan was attached to direct the film. In 2009, Sheridan had finished writing a draft of the adapted screenplay with Nye Heron, and principal photography was reportedly scheduled to begin in April 2010. However, in December 2010, while discussing the troubled production of his 2011 film "Dream House", Sheridan hinted at his detachment from the "Black Mass" project. Oliver's then-newly founded Cross Creek Pictures film production company took over financing for "Black Mass", and Sheridan's exit was confirmed when Russell Gewirtz was hired in 2011 to write another draft for the adaptation, and Barry Levinson was attached to direct instead. The finished version of "Black Mass" was scripted by Mark Mallouk and Jez Butterworth, and has been billed as the "true story of Whitey Bulger, FBI agent John Connolly and the FBI's witness protection program that was created by J. Edgar Hoover."