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.

“I do not consider myself guilty in the death of a single child, a single person,” said Kulayev, who pleaded innocent in May at beginning of the trial in the Supreme Court of North Ossetia, the region where Beslan is located.

He has said he was armed with an assault rifle during the three-day hostage-seizure but never fired it.

Kulayev’s lawyer, Albert Pliyev, urged the court to issue a fair verdict. Prosecutors have demanded the death penalty, testing the moratorium Russia imposed on capital punishment when it joined the Council of Europe in 1996. Relatives of victims have also called for Kulayev to be executed.

“I understand your grief. I lost eight relatives in six years,” Kulayev said at the court session, seemingly suggesting that he has had family members killed during the wars that have plagued Chechnya and spilled over into other parts of Russia’s volatile North Caucasus.

His words did not soothe women who lost children and relatives in the raid.

The court could issue a verdict as early as next week.

Russian authorities say he is the only survivor of the 32 assailants, even as they continue their desperate search for more information about the attack.

One woman jumped toward Kulayev as he was escorted the courtroom and had to be pushed away by guards.

“All these months we have waited for sincere repentance from Kulayev. We expected him to tell us, the mothers, what he may not have told investigators,” said Ella Kesayeva, who heads a Beslan activist group and has criticised the investigations.

“But in his final statement he remained insincere, like the court itself, which has not moved us a step closer to what we want more than anything in life, the truth,” said Kesayeva, one of five women who have been on a hunger strike for eight days to protest against what they say are efforts by authorities to prematurely end the trial.

Many victims’ relatives claim authorities are seeking to avoid sharing blame for the deaths by covering up information.

Pliyev, appearing nervous and speaking haltingly, issued a kind of apology, saying it was his duty as a lawyer to defend “even such” clients as the defendant.

“Believe me, as a human being, it was not easy to become acquainted with the details and materials of this case,” he told the court.

But Pliyev said that investigators had committed many errors and procedural violations in the early stages of the case, including failing to test Kulayev’s skin for gunpowder after he was detained.

Such a test could have determined whether he fired a weapon, he said.