Sole Surviving Beslan Terrorist Found Guilty

The sole surviving Islamic terrorist who assaulted Beslan School Number Three and took hundreds of men, women, and children hostage on the first day of the new school year (September 1, 2004) - and murdered 331* of them in a bloody end to the siege was found guilty of his criminal acts.

However, the article makes no mention of his Islamic ties, or that of the Chechen terrorist group that perpetrated the attack.

"The court has established that Kulayev took part in an armed attack and a hostage-taking..., that he committed murder against defenceless people," said Tamerlan Aguzarov, chief justice of the high court in the province of North Ossetia Tuesday.

"He committed an act of terrorism with the aim of influencing the decisions of the authorities," the judge told the court.

The prosecutor has asked for the death penalty for Kulayev, who had pleaded not guilty, although Russia has declared a moratorium on capital punishment.

Court officials said the reading of the entire verdict would take several days.

Kulayev is the only survivor among the 32 Chechens who stormed the packed school in Beslan in September 2004 and held children, teachers, parents and relatives hostage there for three days.

The siege came to a tragic end in a bloody gunbattle with rescue forces, in which 331 people died, 186 of them children.

The group that attacked School Number One in the North Ossetian town of Beslan was demanding the removal of Russian troops from Chechnya. Moscow's troops have been entrenched for the past decade in a war against Chechen separatists that takes lives every week.

It wasn't just a gunbattle, but the terrorists had rigged the school with explosives that would be set off if rescuers tried to enter the buildings. The place became a deathtrap.

*Wikipedia claims that 344 civilians were killed in the siege.

HT: LGF