Moscow Theater Hostage Crisis - The Chemical Agent Mystery

The Chemical Agent Mystery

It was reported that efforts to treat victims were complicated because the Russian government refused to inform doctors what type of gas had been used. In the records of the official investigation, the agent is referred to as a "gaseous substance". In other cases it is referred to as an "unidentified chemical substance". Based on the gas' effects and examinations of victims, it appears to have been an FSB-made aerosol version of 3-methylfentanyl, an artificial, powerful opium-like substance. Government officials still treat its contents as a state secret.

The Russian Federation, as a member-state of the Chemical Weapons Convention, undertook "never and under no circumstances to carry out any activities prohibited to member-states of this Convention" to develop, to accumulate, to stockpile and to use chemical weapons that can cause death, temporary incapacitation, or permanent harm to humans or animals. The Convention obliges the states to fulfill the conditions of toxic chemicals' use that allow to exclude or considerably reduce the degree of injury and gravity of consequences. However, during the special operation in Dubrovka this provision was disregarded, i.e. neither the type, nor the quantity of the chemical agent helped to attain the set purpose—to neutralize the terrorists so as to rescue the hostages. (The Convention allows the use of some chemical agents like tear gas for "law enforcement including domestic riot control", but requires that "riot control agents" have effects that "disappear within a short time following termination of exposure.")