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More than 330 people were killed, most of them children, as soldiers tried to rescue hostages from Beslan's school Number One.
The man behind last September's massacre, Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev, has told Channel 4 News, he would do the same again.
Not only did he orchestrate Beslan, but also the 2002 Moscow theatre siege in which 120 people died.
He is currently in hiding with a $10m price tag on his head.
Basayev insists that while Russia continues to occupy Chechnya, his is a justified war.
His reason? Hundreds of thousands of Chechen civilians killed in the conflict.
The Russian Government has intervened, and asked the British authorities to stop this material being broadcast.
This programme recognises that people will find Basayev's views repugnant, but does believe there is a public interest in subjecting to scrutiny his attempted rationale for killing children.
Foreign Affairs Correspondent Jonathan Miller reports:
As Beslan's school gym smouldered and its townspeople buried their dead, half of them children, Channel 4 News drew up a list of questions for Shamil Basayev, the Chechen rebel commander accused of masterminding the bloodbath.
We wanted to ask him why? How on earth could killing children help his cause?
We passed our questions to an intermediary in a European capital, requesting a videotaped response.
We have no idea where Basayev is, we presume in Chechnya.
Four months went by before we were e-mailed from the Caucasus.
There was a package for us to pick up, we were told. We were to meet a man in a shopping centre in a Middle Eastern city, we can't even say where.
Last week we were passed three video CDs in a box.
We have verified that the man in the video is Shamil Basayev.
It is the first time he has been seen since Beslan.
He's got our questions up on his laptop. For the next hour, he works his way through them.
It was filmed by Basayev's people, we think about three weeks ago.
Behind him is a backcloth reading "There is no God but God, and Mohammed is his prophet."
Imagery prompting association with other Islamist groups and other wars.
Basayev said: "To be honest I didn't originally plan for this to happen in Beslan, we planned the operation for Moscow or St Petersburg, or both simultaneously but we ran out of money.
"We're not exactly delighted by what happened in Beslan. To be honest, I am even shocked by what happened there, and am still in a state of shock. I didn't expect such cruelty."
But Basayev is not talking about what his people did, he is talking about the Russians.
He blames them for storming the school and killing the children.
He said: "I never thought they'd do it."
Yet long before Russia's Spetznaz Special Forces stormed Beslan's School Number One, Basayev's guerrillas were tormenting and terrifying the children, as was clear from the video they filmed themselves.
President Vladimir Putin went to pray for the dead and the dying. He was quick to blame Chechens.
Shamil Basayev was Russia's most wanted man, Russia's Osama bin Laden.
Putin said: "We will never deal with these bastards. No-one has the moral right to tell us to talk to child-killers.
"Each one of us has suffered deeply and felt in our hearts all that happened in the Russian town of Beslan, where we not only had to deal with murderers but with people who used weapons against defenceless children."
Russia has grown used to terror but Beslan sent seismic shockwaves through the nation.
Basayev added: "You must understand us correctly. We are at war. Russians approve of Putin's policies. They pay their taxes for this war, send their soldiers to this war, their priests sprinkle holy water on the soldiers, and bless their 'holy duty', calling them heroic defenders of the fatherland.
"But we are just 'terrorists'. How can they be innocent? Russians are accomplices in this war. It is just they don't all have weapons in their hands."
Basayev is so convinced that he is not a terrorist that he has chosen to wear a T-shirt emblazoned with the cyrillic words 'anti-terror'. Yet in his lap, he cradles a six-barrelled grenade-launcher.
In his 11-year career as a guerrilla commander, Basayev specialised in extreme violence: hijackings; hostage-takings; bombings.
Ten years ago, when he seized a hospital in southern Russia, 130 died, Basayev escaped.
Two years ago his group took hundreds of theatre-goers hostage in Moscow, 120 died when Russian Special Forces launched a rescue.
In the weeks before Beslan, he blew up two Russian planes in mid-air and bombed the Moscow metro.
Then came Beslan, but this time it was children. Basayev claims to have misread how far Putin would push it. Global revulsion allowed Russia to cast this as its very own War on Terror.
Beslan may have backfired on Basayev, but despite his professed shock, he told us he would do it again.
He added: "We are planning Beslan-type operations in the future because we are forced to do so. Today our citizens are disappearing. Our girls disappear without a trace. They can take anyone. In order to stop this chaos we have to respond in the same way.
"Cynical though it may seem, we are planning these operations, and we will conduct them, if only to show the world again and again the true face of the Russian regime, the true face of Putin with his Satanic horns, so that the world sees his true face. In order to stop the genocide we will stop at nothing."
What he calls "the genocide" is the Russian war in Chechnya, where in one decade between 70,000 and 200,000 people may have died, out of 1m.
Three years after the first war ended, Putin launched the second. His muscular stance on the rebellious republic propelled him into the presidency six years ago.
But the war is becoming deeply unpopular in Russia. As many as 20,000 of its own soldiers may have died there too. Video files posted on Basayev's website show how.
But having already said that there were more Beslans planned, Basayev also argued, too many had already died.
He added: "That is why we are ready to stop the war, and as Maskhadov says to start negotiations without preconditions. But there is one condition. That is the non-negotiable and full withdrawal of the occupying Russian troops from our territory.
"If the Russians withdraw their troops and cease the genocide of our people, I am ready to stand before a court, and I will accept any decision of the court with due deference."
But Basayev knows the Russians will not pull out of Chechnya, that is non-negotiable for Putin. He is in too deep.
Basayev warned that Russia's actions in Chechnya would, in his words, boomerang back, enveloping not only Russia but Europe and the wider world.
Yet as he sat there setting out his justification for jihad, quoting the Koran, Winston Churchill and a Chinese philosopher, his motives grew darker, more primal.
He said: "This is a war between the descendants of monkeys, about whom your Darwin wrote, and the descendants of Adam, glory be to Allah.
"This is the war of the descendants of Adam and Eve to put the animals in their place. I commit this to the great God and those who have taken the path to jihad, the direct path to God. Allah-hu akbar."
And with that invocation of the Almighty, Shamil Basayev, jihadi warrior, philosopher, child-killer, freedom fighter ended his response to our questions.
Basayev had tried to justify what he had done in Beslan last September.
But how do you explain to a child how it ever came to this?
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Decision to broadcast.
Prior to tonight's transmission, the Russian Government expressed outrage and condemned the transmission by Channel 4 News of the Basayev material.
Statement of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation regarding an interview of Shamil Basayev:
"The news that Channel 4 is planning to broadcast an interview with the notorious terrorist and murderer Sh. Basayev has encountered an extremely negative reaction in Moscow. We regard this action as another step towards information support of terrorists operating in North Caucasus.
"We are convinced that such an irresponsible step of broadcasting over a wide audience the views and threats of a bandit wanted by Interpol and listed by the UNSC Counter-Terrorism Committee runs counter to the efforts of the international community to fight terrorism.
"The Embassy of the Russian Federation has demanded from the British authorities not to broadcast the interview. The Russian representatives have pointed out the negative consequences that the propaganda of terrorist views can entail."
Statement from Channel 4 News
"Channel 4 News is an extremely responsible news programme, and we are handling this material with extreme care and seriousness.
"We will ensure our programme meets the strict guidelines that cover the transmission of such material.
"We recognise of course that Shamil Basayev's views will be regarded worldwide as repugnant, but we reject utterly any notion that we are being irresponsible.
"It is simply not the case that the running of such material can be equated with condoning it. This has also been the case for many other instances where the views of those who advocate terrorism, including Osama bin Laden, have been carried by broadcast media.
"The piece on Channel 4 News tonight will make very clear what kind of man is Shamil Basayev and will set in very clear context his attempted rationale for the killing of children."
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