An intense and articulate woman of Korean origin, she speaks of the authorities with undisguised contempt but immediately becomes more mellow when she talks of her dead daughter, Sveta, and her friends.Sveta and her two friends, Emma Khaeva and Aza Gumetsova, also 12, were killed when a rocket-propelled grenade crunched into a wall behind which they were sheltering in the gym. “Have you forgotten what happened? Don’t give in!”The mothers say they have come under heavy pressure since they became more radical. His body was dragged across the floor leaving a trail of blood and lay doubled up in the corner for several hours.Her 17-year-old son, Alan, escaped from the gym when the siege was broken but went back for his 15-year-old brother, Aslan A single shot from a sniper killed Alan. When asked by The Independent why they felt it necessary to spy on a group of angry bereaved women, one FSB source said: “We are here to maintain order and to make sure that nobody kills anyone else.”Marina Pak, who lost her 12-year-old daughter, Sveta, has a more plausible explanation: “They are afraid of us.” FSB officers look on uneasily as the education specialist shouts at the top of her voice in the local cultural centre: “Can there be anything more important than maternal instinct and the knowledge that our children were sold out [for bribes taken by policemen and officials to allow the militants through checkpoints]?” She tells her fellow committee members. “I consider someone who did not guarantee the safety of our children does not have the right to occupy that post [of president].”It would be easier for us if he recognised his guilt and stepped down.

Even now he hasn’t said he is guilty yet he is responsible for the death of our children. Their blood is on his hands.”Mr Dzasokhov is clearly rattled. Officers from the FSB security service regularly monitor the mothers’ meetings, eavesdropping on their conversations and relaying their plans. Aslan was dead by then anyway, his body ripped apart by anti-personnel mines that the militants had strung round the school’s gym.Mrs Betrozova didn’t want to take the body that the authorities told her was Aslan from the morgue “One arm was completely missing half of his other arm was missing.

Her husband, Ruslan, 44, was the first victim of the three-day siege. He was shot dead in the first hour in front of his two sons and hundreds of other children in the sports hall in a show of force designed to cow the hostages. The last thing he wants to do, it is said, is to bow out under a cloud Yet his idea of damage limitation was strange. Instead of stepping down, he sacked his entire government but the reshuffle was largely superficial and bizarre in the extreme.Lev Dzugaev, the press spokesman who lied to the world’s media that there were only 354 hostages being held (in fact there were more than 1,100) and they were being treated well (in fact they were not allowed to eat and were forced to drink their own urine) was, for some reason, made Minister for Culture and Mass Communications.For Mrs Betrozova, 42, the price of what she views as Mr Dzasokhov’s dereliction of duty was high. “He came and told us not to block the road because it was illegal. We told him the murder of our children was also illegal,” Mrs Betrozova said.The crowds eventually did break up after a phone call from Dmitri Kozak, President Vladimir Putin’s troubleshooter in the region. Mr Kozak promised to meet the protesters but such a meeting has so far not taken place and the women are once again considering direct action.What they can’t accept is that, five months after Beslan’s shell-shocked residents scratched their demands for Mr Dzasokhov’s resignation into the school’s bullet-riddled, blood-stained walls, the septuagenarian leader is still clinging on to power.Mr Dzasokhov’s term has a further year to run and he is apparently hoping that Mr Putin will renew his mandate.