MOSCOW, May 26, 2006 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - A Russian court sentenced the only surviving Beslan hostage-taker to life in prison on Friday, May 26, for his part in the bloody 2004 school siege that killed 331 people, more than half of whom were children.

Nurpashi Kulayev, a Chechen carpenter born in 1980, was found guilty on all charges, which included terrorism and murder, Reuters reported.

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

"(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.

Relatives of those who died in the siege shouted at the defendant and cried after the verdict was announced.

Prosecutors told Russian news agencies they approved of the decision.

Kulayev was among a group that took 1,300 hostages in a school in the southern Russian town of Beslan on Sept. 1, 2004.

After a three-day stand-off the siege collapsed in a bloodbath.

The hostage-takers demanded that Russian troops leave Chechnya as a condition for the release of the hostages.

Many of the victims were almost impossible to identify, their bodies severely burned when the sports hall's roof collapsed in flames.

Responsibility for the Beslan attack was claimed by Chechen fighter Shamil Basayev.

Throughout his trial in Vladikavkaz, the administrative capital of Russia's Caucasus province of North Ossetia which borders Chechnya, Kulayev has maintained that he did not kill anyone and that he only "followed orders" from his elder brother when he joined the Beslan gunmen.

"I had pity for them. I have children too," Kulayev, a 25-year-old father of two, said in his own defense. "I was only given weapons once we were inside the school. I did not fire."

Even the chief federal prosecutor in the trial, Nikolai Shepel, has recognized that Kulayev was only a pawn, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

"But it is precisely these pawns who detonate the bombs," said Shepel.

One of Kulayev's brothers, Khanpashi, was killed in the horrific battle with Russian security forces that brought the three-day Beslan school siege to a bloody end.

Another brother was killed in fighting with Russian forces in the second war in Chechnya, begun in 1999 and continuing today.

Kulayev was subdued, resigned and consistently regretful throughout his trial.

With his close-cropped dark hair, soft-spoken voice, slim build and a face that appears boyish at times, Kulayev and his lawyers sought throughout the trial to portray him as an "accidental terrorist."

Witnesses who testified during his trial painted a mixed picture of the man who, since he was first paraded on Russian state television on September 5, 2004, handcuffed and surrounded by masked security guards, has become the face of the Beslan hostage-takers.

The small mountainous republic pf Chechnya has been ravaged by conflict since 1994, with just three years of relative peace after the first Russian invasion of the region ended in August 1996 and the second began in October 1999.

At least 100,000 Chechen civilians and 10,000 Russian troops are estimated to have been killed in both invasions, but human rights groups have said the real numbers could be much higher.

Human rights groups have accused Russian soldiers of committing aggressions and abuses in Chechnya in the two invasions.