editorial comment Hatred fuelled by a collectivist ideology is hardly a new drug.......

The terrorists who took over 1,000 people hostage at a school in southern Russia last month used more than just heroin, the head of a parliamentary committee investigating the Beslan siege told journalists.

As MosNews reported on Monday, the results of forensic tests, released by local prosecutor Nikolai Shepel, showed what would normally have been deadly doses of heroin and morphine in most of the 32 terrorists.

But Senator Alexander Torshin, who heads the Beslan investigation committee, told Ekho Moskvy radio Tuesday that heroin was not enough to produce that kind of behavior in the hostage-takers, and that they must have used new kinds of drugs.

In particular, Torshin cited the militants’ ability to continue fighting despite being badly wounded and presumably in great pain.

“We got a response from the general prosecutor’s office, which said the substance used was heroin,” Torshin told the radio station. “But I’m not satisfied with the response, because we know pretty much about the effects of heroin, and about the effects of other narcotics.”

“I think something absolutely new was used there,” he added, speaking of the terrorists who reportedly ingested unknown substances during the siege.

The parliamentary committee set out once again on Monday for Beslan, a town in southern Russia’s North Ossetia where over 330 people died in the three-day hostage drama, to gather new information.

Earlier, following last week’s trip to the grieving town, Torshin announced that some of the information they learned was “too scary to reveal”.

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