BISHKEK, June 23. /TASS/: Kyrgyzstan’s former President Almazbek Atambayev has been convicted to 11 years and two months behind bars, his attorney Sergei Slesarev told TASS on Tuesday.
"Bishkek’s Pervomaisky District Court has found Atambayev guilty and sentenced him to 11 years and two months in prison," he said, adding that the court also ruled to confiscate his property.
According to the attorney, Atambayev’s defense will challenge this sentence with a higher instance court.
Atambayev, who has been denying all the charges against him as politically motivated, was found guilty of corruption. According to the court, Atambayev was behind illegal release from prison of a crime boss Aziz Batukayev back in 2013.
According to the official version, Batukayev was released from prison after being recognized as terminally ill and fled the country. It was found out later that his medical assessment report had been forged.
Nineteen more people face charges under this case.
Atambayev, who was Kyrgyzstan’s president in 2011-2017, was detained on August 8, 2019 at his residence in the village of Koi-Tash in Kyrgyzstan after a day-long special operation as his supporters offered resistance to law enforcers. One riot police officer was killed during the operation. More than a hundred people, including policemen, sought medical assistance.
Several days after the detention, the former president was charged with the use of force against law enforcers, organization of mass riots, orchestration of a murder plot and an attempted murder, organization of hostage taking, illegal release of crime boss Batukayev from jail, corruption during the overhaul of the Bishkek electricity pant, an illegal real estate deal with the Forum industrial group’s building in Bishkek, and illegal possession of land plots in the village of Koi-Tash. Atabmayev has been kept in a State National Security Committee’s detention center since August 8, 2019.
