Beslan Attacker Gets Life in Jail

The only attacker known to have survived the 2004 Beslan school siege, which ended with the deaths of 331 hostages, was convicted of murder Friday and sentenced to life imprisonment. The sentence triggered anger among some victims’ relatives who had demanded that the defendant be executed, but others supported the decision.

A judge reading the verdict of the North Ossetian Supreme Court first pronounced a death sentence on the defendant, Nur-Pashi Kulayev, a Chechen carpenter in his mid-20s, who stood somberly in a glass and metal cage in the courtroom. But the judge immediately commuted the sentence to life imprisonment in line with a 10-year-old ban on the death penalty in Russia.

A top Chechen separatist guerrilla leader, Shamil Basayev, has claimed responsibility for the school takeover, in which a group of mainly Chechen and Ingush gunmen held more than 1,000 children, teachers and parents in a gymnasium for three days.

The standoff ended when a massive series of explosions and gunfire erupted. At least 371 people died, including hostages, 31 of the attackers and elite special-forces soldiers.

The verdict prompted displays of hostility toward Kulayev in the courtroom. Russian television news showed a woman trying to attack him as he was led away. Outside, victims’ relatives who held differing views about the verdict scuffled angrily. An elderly woman struck Ella Kesayeva, a victims group leader opposed to the death penalty, on the face.

“The punishment should fit the crime,” Aneta Gadzhiyeva, a leader of another victims group, the Mothers of Beslan Committee, said on state-run Channel One television. “Kulayev should be executed, because a life sentence gives him the chance to enjoy at least those small pleasures, which he will have, after all, during life in prison.”

Kesayeva, of the Voice of Beslan group, has contended that Kulayev may provide more information about the incident if he stays alive, and that the opportunity would be lost if he were executed.

The Caucasus republic of Chechnya exercised self-rule after defeating Russian troops in a 1994-96 war, but Russian forces returned in 1999 and have fought guerrillas there since. The gunmen who took over the school had demanded that Moscow pull its troops out of Chechnya.

Many of the victims’ relatives say authorities mishandled the crisis. They blame local police for failing to prevent the attack and federal security forces for allegedly botching the rescue effort.

A series of investigations has failed to establish conclusively how the final, chaotic clash began, with some critics charging that authorities initiated the battle and then used too much firepower while hostages were in the school.

“We want to see officials held accountable,” Fatima Dudiyeva, a former hostage who was in the courtroom Friday, said from Beslan in a telephone interview. “But they can’t investigate this case objectively, because high-placed people are involved. Not average people. Not Kulayevs.”

Dudiyeva described the trial as a farce meant not to reveal the truth but to hide it.

“They did it the way they wanted to. This investigation can be crossed out and thrown in the trash,” she said. “We will insist that there be further investigation.”

Kulayev has claimed innocence. He testified that he was kidnapped by the rebels and taken to the school against his will, and that he fled from the building without firing a shot after the explosions and gunfire began.

But the court said Kulayev had detonated a bomb and shot children as they tried to escape. It found him guilty on all charges.

In response to the judge’s question, “Is the verdict clear to you?” Kulayev said, “It’s clear. All of this is made-up stories.”

Kulayev’s lawyer Albert Pliyev said on NTV that he would appeal the verdict. “Many of the crimes he was charged with were not corroborated objectively and not proved,” Pliyev said.

Russia imposed a moratorium on the death penalty in 1996, and three years later the Constitutional Court formally barred it. That background led some observers to question the North Ossetian court’s decision to formally impose a death sentence before commuting it.

“I was surprised both that the prosecutor demanded the death sentence and that the wording of the court verdict referred to the death sentence, because this is unconstitutional, this has been forbidden by the Constitutional Court,” Marat Baglai, a former Constitutional Court chairman, told NTV.

But Mikhail Barschevsky, the federal government’s representative at the nation’s three highest courts, told NTV that the verdict did “not contradict the criminal procedural code.”

“I’d like to say that I completely understand why the judge did this,” Barschevsky said. “From a purely human standpoint, when he’s observed such tragedies, such witness testimony, when the mothers of Beslan are before him, of course he probably could not help but express his civic position.”

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Natasha Yefimova of The Times’ Moscow Bureau contributed to this report.