BISHKEK: Kyrgyz law enforcement on Saturday carried out a series of arrests, searches and interrogations of opposition figures and journalists as part of what authorities said was a probe into calls for “mass unrest” ahead of a snap parliamentary election on Nov 30.
Though authorities did not link the arrests to the upcoming election, the vote is expected to consolidate the power of President Sadyr Japarov, a populist and nationalist who has clamped down on dissent in what was traditionally Central Asia’s most democratic country.
Several of those targeted are allies of former president Almazbek Atambayev, who governed the mountainous country of 7 million from 2011 to 2017.
Atambayev’s wife and son were summoned for interrogation, while several former lawmakers seem as allies of the former president, who lives in exile in Spain, were detained.
Opposition figures describe the latest actions as politically motivated repression, while authorities say they are carrying out lawful criminal investigations.
In late October, a Kyrgyz court labelled three major independent media outlets as “extremist organizations” and banned their operations, a move that rights groups described as placing unprecedented pressure on journalists. They say that the decision reflects growing restrictions on freedom of expression in the country.
Parties loyal to Japarov are expected to do well in this month’s election, with the president having presided over a rapidly growing economy, fueled in part by Kyrgyzstan’s role in facilitating imports to Russia redirected by Western sanctions over the war in Ukraine.
Kyrgyzstan authorities detain opposition figures ahead of snap election
https://arab.news/55taw
Kyrgyzstan authorities detain opposition figures ahead of snap election
- Though authorities did not link the arrests to the upcoming election, the vote is expected to consolidate the power of President Sadyr Japarov
- Several of those targeted are allies of former president Almazbek Atambayev
French court slashes jails term for trio over 2020 teacher beheading
- Brahim Chnina, the Moroccan father of a girl who falsely claimed that Paty had asked Muslim students to leave his classroom before showing the caricatures, had his 13-year sentence reduced to 10 years
PARIS, France: A French court on Monday reduced on appeal the jail sentences of three men convicted over the 2020 terrorist beheading of a teacher who showed a class cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.
Samuel Paty, 47, was murdered in October 2020 by an 18-year-old radical Islamist of Chechen origin in an act that horrified France.
His attacker, Abdoullakh Anzorov, was killed in a shootout with police.
Two friends of Anzorov, French national Naim Boudaoud and Azim Epsirkhanov, a Russian of Chechen origin, had their sentences of 16 years in prison reduced to six and seven years respectively by a Paris court of appeal.
Both were accused of having driven Anzorov and helping him to procure weapons before the beheading.
Brahim Chnina, the Moroccan father of a girl who falsely claimed that Paty had asked Muslim students to leave his classroom before showing the caricatures, had his 13-year sentence reduced to 10 years.
His daughter, then aged 13, was not actually in the classroom at the time and during the first trial apologized to the teacher’s family.
The court however left the 15-year term for French-Moroccan Islamist activist Abdelhakim Sefrioui untouched.
The quartet were among the seven men and one woman found guilty in 2024 of contributing to the climate of hatred that led to the beheading of the history and geography teacher in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, west of Paris.
Paty, who has become a free-speech icon, used the cartoons as part of an ethics class to discuss freedom of expression laws in France.
