Beslan hostage-taker sentenced to life in jail

A Russian court sentenced the only surviving Beslan hostage-taker to life in prison on Friday for his part in the bloody 2004 school siege that killed 331 people.

Nurpashi Kulayev, a Chechen carpenter born in 1980, was found guilty on all charges, which included terrorism and murder. He had pleaded not guilty.

Prosecutors had requested the death penalty for Kulayev, but Judge Tamerlan Aguzarov said a current moratorium on capital punishment ruled that out.

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“(Kulayev) deserves the death sentence but because the Russian government has introduced a moratorium on carrying out death sentences, I sentence him to life imprisonment,” Aguzarov told the court.

Prosecutors told Russian news agencies they would not appeal the decision.

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Kulayev was part of a group that took 1,300 hostages in a school in the southern Russian town of Beslan almost two years ago. After a three-day stand-off the siege collapsed into a bloodbath. More than half the victims were children.

Aguzarov rejected Kulayev’s claim that he had been forced to take part, and said witnesses’ evidence contradicted his insistence that he had never threatened or harmed any hostages.