Posted on 05/26/2006 2:28:57 PM PDT by KJC1
AP - The only suspect known to have survived the Beslan school siege has been convicted over the deaths of more than 300 people - many of them children - and sentenced to life in prison, touching off an emotional scene in which the mothers of some victims tried to attack the defendant in court.
The verdict returned by the court in southern Russia ended a yearlong trial in the September 2004 hostage-taking that survivors and relatives of those who died say has left essential questions unanswered.
The attack killed 331 people, more than half of them children, as well as 31 suspected militants and 11 elite special forces soldiers. Most of the victims died when explosions tore through the school and security forces stormed the building.
Prosecutors had demanded the death penalty for Nur-Pashi Kulayev, but Russia imposed a moratorium on capital punishment when it joined the Council of Europe a decade ago.
"Kulayev deserves the death penalty, but is sentenced to life in prison because a moratorium is in place," Judge Tamerlan Aguzarov said.
Asked whether he understood the verdict, Kulayev, a Chechen, nodded his freshly shaved head up and down. His lawyer said later Kulayev plans to appeal.
As the judge read the verdict, some victims' mothers threw themselves shrieking on the glass-and-metal cage where Kulayev has stood throughout the trial. Police struggled to restrain them.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.ninemsn.com.au ...
Justice? Hardly.
Even the Russkies are getting PC wishy washy
There can be no true justice in a case like this, because no one can bring back the dead.
But I have heard a Russian jail is not a fun place to be. My thought is that a murderer of over 150 children will find even Russian inmates don't like child killers.
he's in a world of hurt...sux to be him.
They had to go "PC" to get into the EU but I imagine this guy's time in prison may not be much better than death.
I imagine Russian prisons are nothing like the cable TV and weight room sporting US prisons.
Sorry not EU but rather the Council of Europe.
The reporting on this verdict is technically incorrect. Kulaev was sentenced to death, but the moratorium automatically converts it into a life sentence. I give him no more than 18 months (and I'm being generous) before he's found dead of some sort of "accident."
Could we have this vermin share his cell with a colony of Southern Red Ants and bath him daily in honey and seal up the doorway? He would still certainly spend the rest of his satanically inspired life in prison.
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