Фото: АНАТОЛИЙ МОРКОВКИН

On May 29th Moscow will host a charity concert by Anita Tsoy. Money raised from ticket sales is to be donated to families who lost loved ones during the seizure of the theatrical center on Dubrovka in 2002, as well as the tragedy at Beslan School No. 1 in 2004. Commandos from the 'Alpha' Special Forces group will take the stage and sing a requiem in memory of the victims of terror attacks. Part of the funds will be used to create a museum in Moscow, dedicated to the victims of terrorist attacks. And there are tens of thousands of such victims in Russia. Among them are many disabled people, and those who are in need of psychological assistance. Today several of them do not have enough money even to buy food. Some lost an only child, or all of them at once. Or they lost a mother. There are many people such as these, but no one needs them.

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He was a member of Russia's elite security forces. She was a dissident playwright. Did they get too close – to each other, and the truth behind a notorious terrorist attack? Shaun Walker reports from Moscow

Zherdevka, a dead-end town seven hours' drive from Moscow, is the sort of place where nothing ever happens. Almost all the cars are old, battered Ladas; the few cafés reek of cheap frying oil and are populated with friendly but tragic-faced people ordering large early morning glasses of vodka.

Amid this quiet provincial decay, an extraordinary drama has been unfolding in recent weeks, unseen to the world. On a bitter April morning under cold grey skies, two days after the start of the new trial of oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky in Moscow, six defendants were brought, amid heavy security, to a hearing in Zherdevka's small local courthouse.

Outwardly, the case is nothing special. Five men from Dagestan and Chechnya, Russia's restive Caucasus regions, are accused together with one ethnic Russian of an armed robbery which is alleged to have taken place early last year on a nearby stretch of road. But the Russian man on trial is no ordinary criminal. His name is Andrei Yakhnev, and until his arrest in early 2008 he was a high-ranking operative in Russia's secret war on terrorism.

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Living and learning at the 'Muscovy' High School are children with a tragic destiny. They are orphans of officers killed in the Caucasus, or orphaned as a result of terror attacks. There are also children who survived the hell of Beslan, and are maimed and traumatized for life.

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