Former chief convicted on expenses of corruption and taking part in mass unrest within the Central Asian nation.
A courtroom in Kyrgyzstan has sentenced in absentia exiled former President Almazbek Atambayev to greater than 11 years in jail on expenses of corruption and taking part in mass unrest within the Central Asian nation.
Atambayev’s conviction and sentencing got here on Tuesday after the nation’s Supreme Court docket ordered a retrial of an earlier decrease courtroom conviction.
In a brand new case, a courtroom discovered him responsible of illicit enrichment, illegally buying land, and of taking part in mass unrest in August 2019, when resistance to a particular forces operation to arrest him left one individual lifeless and plenty of injured, Kyrgyz media reported on Wednesday.
Atambayev, president from 2011 to 2017, oversaw the republic’s first peaceable handover of energy between elected presidents, however troubles mounted after he rapidly fell out along with his hand-picked successor.
Kyrgyzstan has been rocked by political turmoil, having seen three revolutions because it gained independence with the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union.
Atambayev was first arrested in a chaotic raid of his residence in August 2019, then quickly freed amid a 2020 revolution, solely to be rearrested months later.
He was finally launched from jail in 2023 on well being grounds, travelled to Spain for medical therapy, and has lived overseas since.
Kyrgyzstan’s present president, Sadyr Japarov, mentioned on Wednesday he would “contemplate granting amnesty” to Atambayev if he requested it.
“Six years have handed because the occasions. The state of affairs has calmed down. I believe the courtroom may have been much less harsh,” Japarov instructed the Kabar official information company.
Japarov got here to energy because of the 2020 revolution.
The nation had lengthy been seen as one of many freest and most democratic in Central Asia, a area characterised by autocratic regimes.
However lately, rights teams have criticised democratic backsliding and an escalating crackdown on unbiased civil society and media shops.
