Quotes of the Day

I think we should be included in the Guinness Book of World Records for the shortest court case in history — six days for 24 lawsuits," Lyudmila Trunova said bitterly as she walked out of the Tverskoi district court in Moscow last week. Nobody was very surprised when Judge Marina Gorbacheva — brusquely and without explanation — rejected three and deferred 21 suits against the city of Moscow brought by Lyudmila's husband, Igor, on behalf of victims and families involved in last October's Chechen hostage crisis. "Everything is clear now," Igor said. "The other complaints will also be struck down."

Trunov argued that, under Russian antiterror law, the city should compensate his 61 clients for the three-day siege of a Moscow theater by Chechen separatists. The raid at the Theater Center on Dubrovka ended — as did the lives of 41 guerrillas and about 130 of their more than 800 captives — after Russian troops filled the hall with an unidentified gas and then stormed the building. The terrorists were overcome by the gas, shot and killed. The same gas killed some hostages, but many more died as a result of delayed or inadequate medical care. Trunov said those deaths were the city's responsibility, and that it should pay compensation. One of his clients is Zoya Chernet- sova, whose 23-year-old son, Daniel, died in the raid. "The only thing they should have done was to put a tube in my son's mouth to ventilate his lungs. He would have survived then. Why such negligence?" asked Chernetsova, 50, a nurse who has combat experience with the Soviet Army in Afghanistan.

Trunov's clients crowded each day into the small courtroom to testify. Through tears and clenched teeth, they summoned up painful memories of the night of Oct. 23, when they or their family members enjoyed Act I of the musical romance Nord-Ost (North-East), then found themselves immersed in a real-life tableau that unfolded in horror. "My late husband always joked that musicians and prostitutes will be safe under any regime," says Valentina Khramtsova, widow of Fyodor Khramtsov, a trumpet player in the show's orchestra. "Little did he know that this regime would kill the musicians, too." The family was seeking $1 million in damages, Khramtsova said, "to make the officials remember that their office is a job, not a privilege, to ensure that nothing like that happens to others."

The Moscow government defended itself in part by accusing the plaintiffs of greed. The city faces financial disaster if it has to compensate citizens for terrorist acts, the argument went, and the theater attack is neither the first Chechen operation nor is it likely to be the last. Vladimir Platonov, chairman of the Moscow City Duma, said the plaintiffs were digging into the pockets of average citizens. "Sue the Chechen guerrillas and their backers," suggested Andrei Rastorguyev, legal adviser to the Moscow government, reflecting his bosses' position. Under antiterror legislation, the region (or federation unit) in which an attack occurs must pay victims "moral and material damages." If a court awards compensation beyond the capacity of the region to pay, the central government can be tapped. But citizens cannot sue for punitive damages and the leaders of counterterror operations are exempt from liability.

While the Moscow city government has paid each victim $3,000 in compensation, Trunov argued that the funds do not cover the expensive medical care that many need. And the loss of primary wage earners has plunged many middle-class families — those who could afford a night out at the theater — into poverty. Chernetsova, for example, says her son's death leaves her without support. She lives on a monthly pension of $50. "I don't know how to survive," she says.

Judge Gorbacheva rejected Trunov's requests to question the antiterror team's leaders, as well as public figures who visited the hostages during the siege. "The trial proceeded rather rapidly," Trunov commented, "because the court accepted neither witnesses nor evidence nor experts." In a move that Trunov said was designed to turn him from an advocate into a potential witness in a criminal case, prosecutors also demanded a videotape said to depict conditions inside the besieged theater, and also sought to question him about the tape's origins. Trunov tried to introduce the tape — which he says came from a hostage — into evidence, but Gorbacheva declined. "It's just footage of what was happening in the theater hall," he says. "How they lived there under the guns, how they were humiliated when they had to use the orchestra pit as a lavatory."

Trunov plans to appeal the case to the Russian Supreme Court, and to the European Court of Human Rights. While acknowledging sympathy with the plaintiffs, Rastorguyev insists that officials are not responsible. If he had said "irresponsible," Trunov would have agreed.

• MARYANN BIRD
• Moscow Siege families take their case for compensation to a higher court