Sedated Kursk mother vows to fight on

Nadezhda Tylik: As she was being sedated

LONDON (CNN) -- The mother of a Kursk sailor, who was forcibly sedated as she complained to a Russian minister, has pledged to step up her campaign for justice, The Times newspaper reports.

Nadezhda Tylik was haranguing Deputy Prime Minister Ilya Klebanov over the deaths of 118 sailors when a medic sedated her with a syringe.

Dramatic footage of the incident, with Tylik collapsing unconscious seconds after receiving the injection, was captured by Russian TV and the pictures have been broadcast around the world.

Tylik told The Times she was distraught at the time of the meeting. She said her husband had asked if there was a doctor who could help.

UK experts said the drug administered acted so quickly it was probably similar to a knockout dose used by vets on animals.

Despite her ordeal Tylik, who lives in the closed naval town of Vidyayevo, refused to be silenced and repeated her accusations that President Vladimir Putin and the naval authorities abandoned the men under their command including her son Sergei, 24, who left a wife and an 11-month-old daughter.

IN-DEPTH Death of the Kursk: Background on Kursk disaster and rescue efforts     MESSAGE BOARD The Kursk

"When the tragedy is over we are forgotten, all doors shut on us," she told The Times. She also refused to sail on a trip arranged by the Russian Navy for bereaved relatives to lay wreaths on the Barents Sea over the sunken submarine.

Doctors have been sent by the Russian Navy to the houses of bereaved relatives to administer injections and hand out tablets. Half the women at a recent meeting with Putin were heavily sedated, according to the Moskovsky Komosomolets newspaper.

Local television editor Elena Belkin said of the incident: "It's nothing. They have been giving out injections non-stop to everybody. There's a brigade of doctors there. It's mass psychosis."

The Times reports that the successors of the KGB, the FSB, are accused of trying to steal the television tapes of the controversial meeting with Klebanov and of demanding the cameramen, who shot the footage, be fired.

SLIDE SHOW Mourners attend a memorial ceremony before heading to the site of the sinking in the Barents Sea

One of the British divers sent out to try to help rescue the Kursk sailors said he was "revolted" to hear the Russians claim they had done everything possible to help.

Paddy Heron, who went out with the LR5 mini-submarine, said: "We had one of the most sophisticated vessels available in Europe sitting at the wreck site with a submersible specifically designed to rescue men from submarines, but the Russians wouldn't allow us to use it."

He said he and his whole team were "bitterly disappointed" they had been excluded from the rescue effort.

Jane's Defence expert Paul Beaver told CNN.com when the submarine sank that the Russian military were loathe to let Norwegian or British divers down because the Kursk is fitted with 24 new conventional missiles and a sonar system as yet unseen in the west.

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