hurried trip to the Beslan hospital in the early hours of 4 September to see several of the wounded victims. He was later criticised for not meeting the families of victims. After returning to Moscow, he ordered a two-day period of national mourning on 6 and 7 September. In his televised speech, Putin said: "We showed ourselves to be weak. And the weak get beaten." On the second day of mourning, an estimated 135,000 people joined a government-organised rally against terrorism in Red Square in Moscow. In Saint Petersburg an estimated 40,000 people gathered in Palace Square. Increased security measures were introduced to Russian cities after the crisis. More than 10,000 people without proper documents were detained by Moscow police in a "terrorist hunt". Colonel Magomed Tolboyev, a cosmonaut and Hero of the Russian Federation, was attacked and brutally beaten by a Moscow police patrol because of his Chechen-sounding name. The Russian public appeared to generally support increased security measures; a 16 September 2004 Levada-Center opinion poll found 58% of Russians supporting stricter counterterrorism laws and the death penalty for terrorism, while 33% would support banning all Chechens from entering Russian cities. Long-term effects In the wake of Beslan, the government proceeded to toughen laws on terrorism and expand the powers of law-enforcement agencies. In addition, Putin signed a law that replaced the direct election of the heads of the federal subjects of Russia with a system in which they are proposed by the president of Russia and approved or disapproved by the elected legislative bodies of the federal subjects. The election system for the Russian parliament was also repeatedly amended, eliminating the election of State Duma members by single-mandate districts. The Kremlin consolidated its control over the Russian media and increasingly attacked non-governmental organisations (especially those foreign-founded). The raid on Beslan had more to do with the Ingush involved than with the Chechens, but it was highly symbolic for both regions. The Ossetes and Ingush have a conflict over ownership of the Prigorodny District that was inflamed by the 1944 Stalinist purges and the 1992–1993 ethnic cleansing of Ingush by Ossetes, with assistance from the Russian military. At the time of the raid, more than 40,000 Ingush refugees lived in tent camps in Ingushetia and Chechnya. The Beslan school itself had been used against the Ingush: in 1992, the gym was used as a pen to round up Ingush