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Beslan parents want the truth
02/06/2005 20:45 - (SA)
Vladikavkaz - Mothers of children killed in the Beslan school hostage massacre last year said on Thursday they were prepared to seek a pardon for the lone captured hostage-taker, Nurpashi Kulayev, provided he told the truth about the tragedy in his trial.
Susana Dudiyeva, a head of the Beslan mothers committee representing the parents of 186 children killed in the massacre, said: "For me, the most important thing is that Kulayev is sitting alone in the dock and not with all those who are responsible for what happened.
Dudiyeva said: "Kulayev, we are prepared to pardon you if you begin to talk and tell the truth. If you do this, we will request that you be pardoned."
Dudiyeva was speaking at the trial, which opened on May 17 and resumed on Thursday after a two-week recess.
Battle between hostage-takers, special forces
Kulayev, 24, was one of 32 hostage-takers who seized a public school in Beslan, Russia, on September 1 last year along with more than 1 100 students, teachers and other adults who were in the building to mark the first day of the academic year.
He was the only militant captured alive after the ferocious battle between the hostage-takers and Russian special forces, mixed with armed locals.
According to official figures, 330 people - not including 31 hostage-takers - were killed, 186 of them children.
In his initial testimony, Kulayev said that the hostage-takers had been prepared to let hundreds of children go free if the politicians that they were demanding to see for negotiations had shown up.
He said that a shot from a sniper at a hostage-taker controlling an explosive device was what caused the blast inside the school that triggered the assault.
That story contradicted official accounts that said the blast was set off accidentally by the hostage-takers inside the school.
'Hostage-taker pleads not guilty to terrorism'
Murad Kabuyev, editor of the local Beslan newspaper, and other local residents said security forces used rocket-propelled grenades and flame throwers aimed at the roof of the school while the hostages were still inside.
Kulayev had admitted that he was one of the hostage-takers, but had pleaded not-guilty to eight charges including "terrorism," murder and taking of hostages.
He claimed that he did not know what was planned, did not shoot anyone and that he was mistaken for his brother who was among the slain hostage-takers.
He also testified that the hostage-takers planned to attack military and police targets in three cities in the Russian Caucasus.
The hostage-takers were made up mostly of Chechens and Ingush, an ethnic group closely linked to Chechens.
Their main demands were said to include an end to the war in Chechnya, where tens of thousands of people had been killed in the Russian armed forces' campaigns to crush a separatist movement.
- AFP
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