The criminal case on the fact of torture against Kosai Makhanbaev, a participant in the January events, was closed. This was reported by the Kazakhstan International Bureau for Human Rights (KIBHR).
As ACCA has already reported, Kosai Makhanbaev received three bullet wounds during the January riots in Almaty. Despite this, he was detained along with other participants in the rally and, having ended up in a pre-trial detention center, was subjected to torture, including a sexual violence. The torture lasted from 8 to 18 January. After his release, Makhanbaev, in cooperation with other victims and relatives of those who died during the riots, organized an initiative group that began to demand an honest and fair investigation of every fact of murder, detention and torture. In addition, the initiative group shot a documentary film about the January events “They killed us”.
On June 1 of this year, the participants of the initiative group gathered near the building of the City Prosecutor’s Office in order to find out how the investigation of the January events was progressing and whether those who tortured them would be punished. However, the participants didn’t receive answers to these simple questions. Moreover, Kosai Makhanbaev and three other members of the initiative group were detained and taken to the police. And on June 2, Makhanbaev was arrested for 15 days for violating the law “On peaceful assemblies”.
Upon the expiration of the term of arrest, the activist wasn’t released, but on the contrary, his stay in custody was extended for another two months. At the same time, as Ainara Aidarkhanova, the lawyer of the detainee, said at the time, in order to serve a two-month sentence, Makhanbaev was taken to the pre-trial detention center No.18 in Almaty (the same pre-trial detention center where he was transferred from the hospital, when he was wounded in the January rallies, and where he was then brutally tortured).
Then it became known that on September 9, the Prosecutor’s Office issued a decision to close the criminal case on the fact of torture of Kosai Makhanbaev in the institution LA-155/18.
“We didn’t familiarize with this decision, because it wasn’t handed over to either the victim Makhanbaev or his lawyers,” his lawyer Aidarkhanova said at a recent press conference. “Thus, our right to appeal was infringed. However, we have filed a complaint with the Prosecutor General’s Office and the Specialized Investigation Court demanding that this decision be canceled and we are currently awaiting a court hearing on this issue.”
According to Aidarkhanova, the decision of the Prosecutor’s Office to close the criminal case is unlawful, because no investigative actions, except for the interrogation of the victim himself and four confrontations, were carried out.
“We were not familiarized with any examinations. They were not appointed. The witnesses, who were present in the institution together with Makhanbaev and who could have been eyewitnesses of the ongoing torture, were not interrogated,” the lawyer emphasized. “And the very fact that we still don’t have a single suspected person, although the victim himself directly pointed to eight employees of the escort service of the Police Department. Four of them were interrogated and, naturally, denied their involvement in Makhanbaev’s torture. Unfortunately, there is such a tendency that the Anti-Corruption Service for Almaty city stops all cases on the fact of torture on exculpatory grounds.”
According to another victim of police torture, Sayat Adilbekuly, the fact that Kosai was sent back to the same pre-trial detention center, where they were tortured, speaks for itself.
“There is a very strong psychological pressure in the pre-trial detention center. I don’t think there is any reason to keep him there. I realized that our authorities don’t particularly like active people, and Kosai Makhanbaev actively defended his rights and demanded justice. Our President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev promised that we would build a New Kazakhstan, that there would be reforms. I hope that Kosai’s preventive measure will be changed so that he can be near his mother, who is now very sick. I call on the authorized persons to change his preventive measure to at least a written pledge not to leave, and ideally stop his persecution altogether,” Adilbekuly stressed.
