SOLONGIRAY ATAYEV produces a photograph to explain why his son, Rustam, took part in one of the bloodiest hostage massacres in history.

It shows a 12-year-old boy lying dead, his head split in two. His name was Ibraghim and he was Rustam’s younger brother.

“He disappeared in Grozny in 2002. Then villagers saw men in camouflage burying something. It was Ibraghim and two other boys, all naked, all with their skulls broken,” Mr Atayev, 63, said. “You can imagine how Rustam reacted.”

Rustam, who was 25 years old when he joined the take- over of School Number One, in Beslan, grew up in Psedkah, a village of dusty streets and heavily laden apple trees in Ingushetia, the region bordering Chechnya.

His parents, both ethnic Chechens, say that he was shy and caring. Then came Russia’s two wars in Chechnya and a decade of carpet bombing, summary executions and random violence that has killed tens of thousands and brutalised an entire population.

A survey by the aid group Médecins Sans Frontières last year indicated that 90 per cent of Chechens had lost someone close and more than one in six had witnessed such a death.

In the past five years 3,000 to 5,000 people have disappeared, usually after detention by the security forces, the human rights group Memorial said.

“We’re very sorry for the children in Beslan. They were not guilty,” Nurzhan Salamova, 48, Rustam’s stepmother, said. Mr Atayev interrupted her and said bitterly: “But that was one school, while in Chechnya everyone has been terrorised.”

Past the bombed-out remains of Grozny, the capital, then up into the steep foothills of the Caucasus mountains is the village of Engenoi, home to at least two other of the hostage takers, including the only one to survive, Nurpashi Kulayev. His white-bearded father, Aburkash Kulayev, said that he was sorry for the suffering in Beslan but he refused to condemn Nurpashi, or his brother Khanpashi, who also was among the terrorists and was killed.

“It’s cruel. Of course we feel their pain,” Mr Kulayev, 70, said in his rickety cottage overlooking a small maize field, pear trees and the wooded hills where Chechen guerrillas continue to harass Russian forces.

“The mothers received a terrible blow. Their children went out and never came back. But whatever happened, happened. I don’t condemn my sons, or try to justify. Thousands of children have died in Chechnya.”

Mr Kulayev, who lost a third son fighting the Russians in the Chechen town of Argun, said that during a four-hour prison meeting with Nurpashi, who is on trial in the city of Vladikavkaz, near Beslan, his terrorist son “did not ask my forgiveness”.

Experts say that the mayhem in which a generation of Chechens has grown up makes recruitment easy for extremist chiefs such as Shamil Basayev, who organised the Beslan hostage-taking and gave warning recently on Unites States television that he was ready to begin similar attacks.

In a society with a strong vendetta culture, some fight to take revenge. Some are attracted by the strict Islamic discipline of radical guerrilla units. Others are drawn into the underground by chance, then discover that they cannot turn back.

“Most of those taking part in terrorist attacks do not know the target beforehand,” a Russian counter-terrorism officer said on condition of anonymity.

“But they have blood on their hands, so they’re tied in, and once they get to the target they can’t flee. Most of those who went to Beslan did not know where they were being sent,” he said.

“They are trapped. Imagine living in the forests, constantly reading pamphlets about the Koran and living with people for whom killing is absolutely normal. If you disobey, you die,” he added.

The parents of Rustam Atayev in Psedakh, like many Chechens, also feel trapped by a conflict that seems to have no limit in cruelty and no resolution.

“There is no way out,” Mr Atayev said. “The dead are to be envied.”

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