[JURIST] The sole surviving hostage-taker in the 2004 Beslan school siege [JURIST news archive; BBC backgrounder] will be given a new name to prevent retaliation by other inmates at the island penal colony where he will be imprisoned, a law enforcement source told the Interfax news agency Monday. Nurpashi Kulayev [Wikipedia profile], who was found guilty of terrorism [JURIST report] in May, will serve his life sentence at the Vologda Colony on Ognenny Island in Central Russia. Officials at Vologda Colony, one of only five Russian prisons for convicts sentenced to life, did not confirm or deny the report.

Some 1,300 people, most of them children, were taken hostage in a school building in Beslan, North Ossetia, in September 2004 by militants demanding that Russian soldiers leave Chechnya. Many hostages died when the school roof collapsed in flames during a rescue effort. All told, 330 people were killed and 783 were wounded. Kulayev is appealing the guilty verdict [JURIST report]. MosNews has more.