[citation needed] Kulayev's trial began in Vladikavkaz on 17 May 2005, with prosecutors General Nikolai Shepel and Maria Semisynova seeking life imprisonment on charges of terrorism, murder and hostage-taking on behalf of 1,343 plaintiffs.
The trial judge was Tamerlan Aguzarov, and Kulayev was defended by Umar Sikoyev and Albert Pliyev, the latter of whom had only practised law for just two weeks prior to being appointed by the state.
[1] His defense lay in the claim that he was one of the recruited Chechens who were told they would be attacking a military checkpoint, and had no foreknowledge their target was the Beslan school.
[4] On 16 December 2005, Valery Andreyev, chief of the North Ossetian Federal Security Service (FSB) at the time of the hostage-taking, testified that he had personally given the order to overrun the school during the siege.
In January 2007 the head of the Beslan commission asked the Chief Administration for Penitentiary Service of Russia to confirm or refute the assumption that Kulayev was dead.