Russian court hears tales of Beslan horror

VLADIKAVKAZ, Russia, May 19 (Reuters) Former Beslan hostages relived their ordeal as Judge Tamerlan Aguzarov recounted tale after tale of almost unimaginable horror.

As he summed up the trial of the last surviving member of the group of militants who seized 1,300 hostages in Beslan two years ago, survivors and relatives of the 331 victims, more than half of them children, stared straight ahead with glazed eyes.

His accounts of the three days of fear that the hostages endured in Beslan's school No. 1 often passed in as many sentences, as Aguzarov condensed testimony down to the very barest of facts.

''On September. 1, 2004, she with her daughters was taken hostage by armed terrorists who forced them along with everyone into the school's sports hall, where their phones were taken away,'' he said yesterday as he recounted the testimony of one former hostage.

''On September. 3, there was an explosion caused by the terrorists. Her daughter was killed after receiving injuries,'' he added, his voice hoarse as he moved on to the evidence given by another hostage.

The judge rarely looked up, his eyes remaining focused on the red file in his hands. He never glanced at the defendant to his left who stood silently in a glass cage, wearing a black t-shirt with red flashes, his hands behind his back.

DEADLIEST ATTACK Nurpashi Kulayev, a Chechen born in 1980 who narrowly escaped being lynched after the siege's bloody end when he was found hiding under a truck, is charged with crimes ranging from terrorism to the illegal ownership of weapons.

Prosecutors have demanded he be put to death for his part in Russia's deadliest peacetime attack despite an official moratorium on the use of capital punishment.

Aguzarov, in two previous days of summing up in the nine-month trial, has made clear he rejects Kulayev's defence that he was forced to take part and that he considers him to have committed an act of terrorism with the aim of securing independence for Chechnya.

But some survivors said prosecutors had failed to pin any specific incidents on Kulayev, who -- along with a handful of policemen charged with negligence -- is the only person being tried in relation to the tragedy.

''No one has said they saw him kill anyone. If they wanted to do this, they should have just locked him up without this nine-month trial,'' said Ella Kesayeva, whose Voice of Beslan pressure group argues that the officials who failed to prevent the siege should also be brought to book.

Like many former hostages, she says the chaos that accompanied the siege and the bloodbath that ended it, point to a deep-rooted culture of incompetence among state officials.

''If the conclusion is that the only people to blame are Kulayev, the terrorists and a few policemen, then we will never find out the truth about how this happened. And then terrorist acts will repeat themselves,'' she said after the session ended.

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