Dubrovka Theater Center in October 2002

Ten years ago, tragedy struck at the Dubrovka Theater Center when 912 people watching the Nord Ost musical were taken hostage by armed terrorists headed by Movsar Barayev. The terrorists had small arms, ammunition and explosive devices.

The terrorist act was called on to disrupt public safety, to scare the population and to force Russia to withdraw troops from the Chechen Republic.

Some spectators were allowed to call their families using cell phones and to tell them that terrorists would execute ten hostages for every dead or wounded terrorist.

The families of hostages and their relatives also spent three terrible days. Police cordons stopped them near the Dubrovka Theater Center.

The Dubrovka Theater Center seized by terrorists. October 2002.

On October 26, the Alfa commando unit and the Vympel commando unit of the Special Weapons and Tactics Center of the Federal Security Service started regrouping around the Theater Center.

At about 5:00 a.m. Moscow time, floodlights illuminating the main Theater Center entrance were switched off. The commandos started pumping sleeping gas inside the building. Two hours later, Presidential Aide Sergei Yastrzhembsky made an official statement that the hostage release operation was over. Photo: Commandos prepare to storm the Dubrovka Theater Center.

All the terrorists were killed and most hostages released as a result of the operation.

The official estimate is that 130 hostages were killed.

October 26, 2002, was declared a day of mourning for the terrorist act victims in the Russian Federation. Photo: Near the Dubrovka Theater Center seized by terrorists. October 2002.

In April 2004, the Moscow City Court sentenced brothers Alikhan and Akhyad Mezhiyev, as well as Aslan Murdalov and Khanpasha Sobraliyev, to 15-22 years in prison after finding them guilty of aiding terrorists and facilitating the Nord Ost hostage crisis.

The investigation of a criminal case regarding the hostage crisis at the Dubrovka Theater Center was suspended in June 2007 because it was impossible to establish the whereabouts of the suspects. In February 2011, a prosecutor’s office annulled the decision to stop the criminal investigation and ordered that the investigation be resumed.