Ex-president sentenced in absentia
2013-02-12 16:10
Bishkek - A Kyrgyz military court on Tuesday sentenced in
absentia former president Kurmanbek Bakiyev to 24 years in prison and his
brother Janysh to life over a murder of a powerful top official in 2009.
Bakiyev, who was toppled in a bloody 2010
uprising fuelled by his family's rampant corruption during a half decade in
power, was convicted of abuse of power by the Bishkek military garrison court.
His brother Janysh, the former head of the state
bodyguard service under Bakiyev, was meanwhile convicted of multiple murders.
Both men fled to Belarus after the 2010 revolution and
Minsk has so far refused requests from Bishkek's new rulers to extradite the
pair.
The closed-door trial against them specifically related
to the 2009 murder of the former head of the presidential administration Medet
Sadyrkulov, a powerful political player known as the "grey cardinal".
Sadyrkulov was killed in March 2009 in what the
pro-Bakiyev authorities blamed on a car accident but which the opposition
immediately suspected was murder carried out by forces loyal to the president.
The fact that the bodies of Sadyrkulov and his two dead
companions were found in the Lexus jeep with severe burns had immediately
raised suspicions about whether an accident was the cause of death.
The investigation found that Sadyrkulov had been
personally tortured by Janysh Bakiyev that resulted in the breaking of several
bones.
He was then found burnt to death in the jeep on the
highway leading from the Kazakh city of Almaty.
A Kyrgyz man named Omurbek Usmonov had been found guilty
of causing the car accident but in April 2010 he was found dead on the
outskirts of Bishkek.
Sadyrkulov was believed to be returning from Kazakhstan
where he had been collecting millions of dollars to fund an uprising against
Bakiyev. The cash has never been found.
After Bakiyev was overthrown in April 2010, the case was
reopened and several security officers were jailed in 2012 over their roles in
the murder.
The former president has also been charged with mass
murder over the fatal shooting by police of dozens of people in the 2010
uprising.
