Beslan accused pleads innocent as court retires

The man alleged to be the sole surviving attacker of the Beslan school seizure protested his innocence in his final statement today, as the court retired to consider its verdict in a trial that has brought little relief for relatives of victims of the bloodbath.

Nur-Pashi Kulayev’s lawyer, meanwhile, told the southern Russian court that investigators had made procedural errors and failed to present evidence that the defendant fired a weapon during the September 1-to-3, 2004, attack that killed more than 330 people, most of them children.