A court in Kazakhstan has convicted three former police officers on charges of committing acts of torture in the wake of the political unrest that roiled the country in early January 2022.
The Zhetysu regional prosecutor’s office said in a statement that the court proceedings that ended in the city of Taldykorgan on March 18 saw three defendants sentenced to prison terms ranging from four to six years. A fourth defendant received a non-custodial sentence.
The ex-policemen have also been stripped of their ranks and barred from any future employment in the civil service.
This case stemmed from a broader investigation led by prosecutors into the conduct of the police during and after a nationwide surge of turbulent public discontent that has come to be known as Bloody January.
One of the alleged victims of the officers on trial was Azamat Batyrbayev, who is reputed to have been responsible for pulling down a statue of former President Nursultan Nazarbayev in Taldykorgan. Images of the toppled statue became emblematic of the general rage against the corrupt cronyism that prevailed under Nazarbayev, who resigned in 2019 but retained considerable power while in retirement.
Investigators determined that the Almaty region police officers in the dock had employed “prohibited investigative methods” – a euphemism for the use of physical violence against detainees. Prosecutors argued that this abuse had led to seven individuals sustaining injuries of varying severity.
This was one of a trickle of similar cases that have been tried in Kazakhstan over the past year or so.
In June, the General Prosecutor’s Office announced that 39 law enforcement officers were behind bars at that time on suspicion of “using unauthorized investigative methods against 88 citizens.” At the start of this year, prosecutors said in response to a query filed by news website Vlast that 12 criminal cases involving 42 Interior Ministry and National Security Committee, or KNB, employees had been passed on to the courts for further processing. That number did not appear to include the four officers convicted this week.
Rights activists have charged that the authorities are severely undercounting the number of law enforcement officials responsible for acts of torture.
In another relatively recent trial, seven former KNB employees were sentenced to prison terms ranging from three to five years in December for torturing people detained during the January 2022 events. Three other KNB staff received suspended sentences, and one was acquitted.
A lawyer acting for the victims argued that the punishment was insufficiently severe.
