BOMBING ARREST TRIGGERS PROTEST

Two weeks after the August 1 terrorist bombing of the Mozdok military hospital, there is still only one person who has been formally arrested. He is Dr. Artur Arakelyan, the hospital’s chief doctor, who has been accused of criminal negligence.

However, most of Arakelyan’s colleagues seem to think that the Russian security services are making him a scapegoat for their own failures. Some 150 of the hospital’s physicians have sent an open letter to the Kremlin and the Ministry of Defense protesting his arrest, according to an August 18 article in Novaya gazeta. Many of these doctors barely knew him, since he had been appointed to his position only three weeks before the explosion. This is precisely why they consider the charges against him to be so unjust.