"The court has established that Kulayev took part in an armed attack and a hostage-taking ..., that he committed murder against defenceless people," said Tamerlan Aguzarov, chief justice of the high court in the southern Russian province of North Ossetia.
"He committed an act of terrorism with the aim of influencing the decisions of the authorities," the judge told the court, reading from a text of the verdict.
Under the Russian legal system, the court's assertion that Kulayev, a
Chechen man in his mid-20s, had committed the crimes he was charged with was not the same as a formal announcement of conviction of those crimes. But legal experts said it left no doubt that conviction lay ahead.
"He cannot be acquitted," said Taimuraz Chedzhemov, a lawyer representing the families of the victims, who said the formulation of the verdict read by the judge made it clear that the court had no doubt about Kulayev's guilt.
Kulayev pleads not guilty
Court officials said the reading of the entire verdict in the trial would take several days.
The state prosecutor in the trial voiced satisfaction at the verdict reading. "The judge confirmed Kulayev's guilt under all eight articles of the indictment," said Deputy Prosecutor General Nikolai Shepel.
The Beslan hostage-takers had demanded the withdrawal of Russian troops from Chechnya, where they have been fighting against separatist rebel forces for most of the past 12 years.
Chechen rebel warlord Shamil Basayev claimed responsibility for the Beslan attack.
Kulayev pleaded not guilty to the charges brought against him at the outset of the trial nearly 12 months ago and has maintained his innocence throughout the procedings.
The state prosecutor has asked for the death penalty for Kulayev. Russia however has for the past decade observed a moratorium on capital punishment, and experts agreed the most likely sentence for Kulayev would be life in prison.
Investigation questioned
Russian law enforcement officials say Kulayev was the only survivor among the 32 Chechens who stormed the school in Beslan on September 1, 2004, the first day of school in the Russian academic year, and held children, teachers, parents and relatives hostage there for three days.
The siege around Beslan's School Number One came to a tragic end in a bloody gun battle with rescue forces, in which 331 people died, 186 of them children.
Kulayev was reportedly captured in Beslan on September 3, 2004, during a battle between Russian commandos and the armed Chechens. The 31 other hostage-takers were all reportedly killed in the fighting.
The Beslan investigation and trial have raised serious questions about the authorities' handling of the crisis, and some of the victims' relatives said Kulayev was being made a scapegoat and they did not want to see him put to death.
A lawyer representing victims' families said there have been numerous irregularities in the Beslan massacre investigation, which is still open.
"Documents were drawn up in a legally incorrect way, decisions and conclusions are absurd," the lawyer, Soslan Kochiyev, said in an interview with the Russian opposition daily Kommersant.