Beslan school suspect: More attacks were planned
Militants who carried out last September’s bloody school hostage-taking in Beslan had also planned to detonate powerful car bombs in other cities in southern Russia, a suspect in the raid told a court today.
Nur-Pashi Kulayev said during his trial that he had heard the leader of the 32 heavily armed militants – whom he called “Colonel” – discussing a plan that envisaged setting off the explosions, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported.
Kulayev said the “Colonel” was talking about placing trucks rigged with explosives near police and security headquarters in Chechnya’s capital Grozny and the cities of Vladikavkaz and Nazran in the neighbouring provinces of North Ossetia and Ingushetia.
Kulayev, whose trial at the North Ossetian Supreme Court in Vladikavkaz began earlier this month, has pleaded innocent to charges including terrorism, murder and attacking law enforcement officers during the raid on Beslan’s School No. 1 on September 1-3.
The attackers seized more than 1,100 schoolchildren, relatives and teachers, and 330 people died during the fierce gun battle and explosions that Russian security agencies said were triggered by the terrorists. More than half of the dead were children.
Kulayev, the only militant to survive the raid, could get life imprisonment if convicted.
