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Beslan hostage-taker on trial
17/05/2005 13:08 - (SA)
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| Beslan school hostage-taker Nur-Pashi Kulayev appears in court in Vladikavkaz, Northern Ossetia, Russia. (Sergei Grits, AP) |
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Vladikavkaz, Russia - The sole trial of an alleged hostage-taker brought to justice after the Beslan school siege opened in southern Russia on Tuesday, eight months after one of the world's deadliest attacks killed 330 people, more than half of them children.
The chief justice of Russia's North Caucasus republic of North Ossetia opened the hearing against 24-year-old Nurpachi Kulaiyev shortly before noon.
About 40 people, mostly relatives of the victims of the siege crowded into the small courtroom, as the defendant, clad all in black, entered.
"We are going to look at him to see the expression in his eyes when he looks at us," Zareta Kargiyeva, who lost a daughter-in-law and grandson in the siege, told AFP before the start of the proceedings.
The trial, which is open to the public, is expected to last several months, as prosecutors alone are expected to call several hundred witnesses. Kulaiyev faces eight charges, including terrorism, murder and hostage taking.
"He should not be tried, we already know what he has done," Kargiyeva said. "He should be torn apart, like they did to our children who were in that room with no water, and whom they killed."
During the hostage siege last year, 32 militants burst into the courtyard of Beslan's School No 1 on September 1 as pupils, teachers and their parents gathered in the school courtyard for Russia's traditionally festive first day of classes.
The militants, who included two women, herded the people into the school gym, which authorities said eventually came to hold more than 1 100 people, including babies and toddlers.
Mining the room with explosives and forbidding the hostages from eating or drinking, the group demanded that Moscow end the conflict in the nearby republic of Chechnya, where a second war in a decade between separatists and pro-Kremlin forces has been waged since 1999.
Stopped crowd from lynching him
The siege ended two days later in a chaotic shootout between the militants, Russian special forces and local vigilantes after a massive explosion inside the gym.
Kulaiyev, a Chechnya native, was the sole alleged hostage-taker to have been apprehended after the siege. Police wrung him from a crowd that was in the process of lynching him near the school hours after the shootout.
He has denied that he had killed any of the hostages.
The latest official toll put the number of dead at 330, excluding the hostage takers. Out of these 318 were civilians, 186 of them children.
In Beslan itself, a sleepy town of 30 000 near Vladikavkaz, many residents were sceptical about the trial.
"What can we expect from this trial? Everyone knows that it was our special forces that killed them," Vladimir Daurov, who lost his son in the siege, said. "This terrorist, they can even release him. Only God can be the judge."
- AFP
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