A war on body and mind, Michael Crowley

The danger of security agencies, military forces and violent groups using “incapacitatant” chemical agents to disable armed or civilian adversaries has grown since the Moscow theatre siege of 2002. There is urgent need and imminent opportunity for regulation, says Michael Crowley. It is seven years since, at 6am on 26 October 2002, Russian security forces deployed an incapacitating chemical weapon in an attempt to free over 800 people who had been held hostage by armed Chechen fighters for fifty-seven hours in a Moscow theatre. Most of the hostages were saved, but more than 120 died as a result of the incapacitant (and all the forty-one attackers were killed in the operation). The damage was compounded by the secrecy surrounding its deployment, which delayed and compromised the treatment of the surviving hostages, in turn... [read full story]                    

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