Pupils give evidence

Four pupils were interrogated at the 24th hearing of the Nurpashi Kulayev case on 23 August. Besides, six other witnesses gave evidence.

Aslan Persayev (a 10th form pupil at the moment of the terrorist act) was taken hostage together with his younger brother. He said his friends and he had got into the school climbing in through the window. Once in the corridor, they tried to run away, but all corridors were already controlled by the gunmen and "it was impossible to run away."

The gunmen did not begin to mine the gymnasium at once, but in two hours after the seizure. Aslan said they were many because when they took him out to the school corridor, he saw that practically each classroom was patrolled by two gunmen.

"I think there had been more gunmen then those of them who died. Two are not among those dead whose pictures I was shown in the hospital," he added.

Aslan said, "He (Kulayev - ed.) says that he had no weapons. But I didn't see any gunman there who would not have a weapon. Even Khodov, wounded and with a bandage on his arm, held a handgun."

Thirteen-year-old Alan Dzgoyev who was the next to give evidence told that he had seen Kulayev in the school gymnasium. According to the boy, the defendant was sitting in the middle of the gymnasium, wearing a military uniform and holding a submachine gun in his hands.

"No, I am not mistaken," he maintained when Prosecutor Maria Semisynov asked Alan if he could be mistaken. "I recognised him at once when I saw him on TV. I asked him for water. The first time he permitted. And the second time he told me, "Now you are getting cheeky."

Kulayev denies this evidence explaining that the "boy is probably mistaken" and that he could not have seen him in the middle of the gymnasium.

The question was again asked to all victims what gunmen had demanded. Aslan Persayev put forward an opinion that "they actually didn't know for sure what they wanted."

"Some gunmen wanted troops to be withdrawn from Chechnya. Others demanded that their friends should be released from our prisons. And when they were convoying us along the corridor, I asked one gunman what you want. And he told me, 'We want nothing.'"

Another victim, Fatima Bugulov, told that the gunmen's main demand was withdrawal of troops from Chechnya and independence for the republic.

"When I heard the demand of independence for Chechnya, I understood that we were doomed because all terrorists should be wasted on the toilet. I don't think those were fanatics. I did not see fanatics there. The gunmen thought that they would escape and therefore, the government should have proceeded with talks. I left that place, the school with a feeling of vulnerability which I experience even now," Ms Bugulov said.

In the opinion of Fatima Bugulov, those four (Dzasokhov, Ziazikov, Aslakhanov and Roshal) whom the rebels had wanted should have come to the school because "their lives do not cost the life of one child."

• More evidence in Kulayev case