Interesting decisions were made by the Kazakh Themis regarding blogger Elmar Khusainov, who insulted and slandered another blogger, Alzhan Ismagulov. According to the victim most likely this happened because Khusainov is a friend of the state secretary of the republic Yerlan Karin.
This story began in February 2021. Ismagulov then participated in the trial of the nationalist activist Margulan Burambaev, the former Consul General of Kazakhstan in St. Petersburg Meiram Kanapyanov, and the economist Danat Namazbaev. All three were accused of propaganda or calls for a violent seizure of power and a change in the constitutional order. Burambaev and Kanapyanov were also charged with inciting social, national, and class hatred. Note that Namazbaev and Burambaev were sentenced to 5 years in prison, and Kanapyanov managed to escape from Kazakhstan.
According to Alzhan Ismagulov, when this high-profile case was being tried, Elmar Khusainov, a member of the Nur Otan party (now renamed Amanat), began to appear on Facebook in support of all three defendants.
“He not only supported them but also actively tried to whitewash them,” Ismagulov says. He also issued a post in which he called me a separatist. Only a court can assert that someone is a separatist. Due to the short statute of limitations, I did not have time to go to court with a lawsuit against him. In July, Khusainov published a similar post again. I filed a statement to the police. The police send the post to the state forensic examination, which sees it as slander. The case goes to court.”
However, in December, the judge of the Specialized Interdistrict Court for Administrative Offenses, Galiya Kasymova, issued a decision to terminate the proceedings in this case due to the lack of corpus delicti. According to Ismagulov, this happened even though Khusainov could not provide evidence that the plaintiff was engaged in separatism.
“In the decision, she indicated that Khusainov simply used his right, as a citizen, to apply to state bodies, and specifically to the Minister of Internal Affairs with a request to check my activities,” Ismagulov is surprised. “However, I demanded that he be held accountable not for appealing to the minister but for the fact that he, without any reason, accused me of separatism.” The appeal instance of the Almaty City Court in January 2022 refuses to satisfy Ismagulov’s appeal and leaves the decision of the first instance unchanged.
But that’s not all. In December last year, Ismagulov was in Aktobe, where, in fact, he saw another post from Khusainov, in which he saw insulting words addressed to him and went to court.
“Talgat Kenzhebulatov, Judge of the Aktobe City Court No. 2, opened up new horizons of evidence in the insult case,” Ismagulov exclaims. “In his verdict of June 8, 2022, he indicated that since Khusainov wrote insulting words using Latin letters, then, therefore, he did not intend to offend me.”
Here, perhaps, it is necessary to give a full quote from the verdict, regarding this part:
“According to the court, the words «sovкодroчеrov», «podлецоv», «поdonkov», «д@лbiчей», used by E. Khusainov, do not have an indecent form in the stated grammar, that is, using the mixed letters of the Cyrillic and the Latin alphabet, since from a legal point of view, with such a spelling, it is unacceptable to recognize the words «sovкодroчеr», «podлец», «поdonok», «д@лbiч» as «совкодрочер», «подлец», «подонок», «далбич».
In this regard, the conclusion and testimony of the expert Suimbayeva S. that there is an indecent form in the expressions «sovкодroчеrov», «podлецоv» and «поdonkov» is unfounded by the court. At the same time, the court considers the conclusions about the absence of an indecent form in the expressions «podлецоv» (роdлец), «поdonkov» (поdonok), to be correct, since even if these words are spelled correctly, according to the court, the words «podлецоv» (scoundrel) and «поdonkov» (bastard) they do not have an indecent form, since they are literary words.
Ismagulov does not hide sarcasm:
“And if you write any bad word about Judge Kenzhebulatov in Latin, he will not take it as an insult either. In addition, the judge in the verdict indicated that since Khusainov wrote a post about me in the third person, this does not mean that the insults were addressed to me.”
Ultimately, the court denied Ismagulov’s claim and found Khusainov not guilty. Moreover, the court ruled to recover from the victim Ismagulov $ 4,300 in favor of the defendant Khusainov as compensation for procedural costs.
“I have never seen anything like this,” Ismagulov exclaims, “that a person who was insulted was also charged with money for insulting him? With this attitude, I simply will no longer file lawsuits to defend my constitutional rights! And the ridiculous wording simply raises legitimate questions – is there an agreement between the judges and Khusainov? Is there a corruption component?
