In Kazakhstan, the trial concerning the case of Sani Abdykash (a former employee of the special unit of the National Security Committee), who was accused of rape and torture of a transgender woman Victoria Berkhodzhaeva, has been ended.
As ACCA has already reported, Victoria Berkhodzhaeva, before the sex change surgery, was named Karimzhan Berkhodzhaev.
She was detained in August 2016 for extorting $ 33,000 from another transgender woman. According to the investigation, Berkhodzhaeva threatened that she would tell her lover that she used to be a man. However, the victim of the blackmail turned to the police for help and Berkhodzhaeva was detained red-handed – upon receiving $ 10,000. In March 2017, she was sentenced to 7 years in prison with confiscation of property. However, the defendant pleaded not guilty.
As Victoria later told reporters, from the moment of her arrest she was and is being subjected to attempts of violence by the security forces’ officers.
“Three years ago, as soon as the investigation of my case began, the escorts and police officers of the police department of Bostandyk, who were conducting the investigation, harassed me,” she said. “They forced me to have oral sex with them, asked to show my genitals. I am a full-fledged woman. The female gender is indicated in my documents, and therefore I am in the women’s colony. I wrote dozens of statements on the facts of harassment, but my arguments were not taken into account only because I am transgender. After the verdict of the court, I was sent to the colony.”
Then, according to her, she was sexually harassed and tortured several times by the officer of the special unit of the NSC, 45-year-old Sani Abdykash.
Tired of the lawlessness perpetrated by the NSC’s officer, Berkhodzhaeva wrote a statement and made a fuss in the media. Only after that she was recognized as a victim. According to her lawyer Ayman Umarova, Victoria is in constant fear, she is afraid that they will exert pressure on her and that this case will not come to court.
Meanwhile, in May of this year, when Abdykash was already taken into custody, an attempt was made on the lawyer Ayman Umarova, who defended Berkhodzhaeva. On May 19, in the car she was driving, initially the brakes failed, and then the car caught fire. Umarova established linkage between this incident and her activities. She suggested that employees of the National Security Committee may be involved in this.
“Mr. Turgumbaev [ACCA: Minister of Internal Affairs of Kazakhstan Erlan Turgumbaev], I suspect your employees of this! Who ordered them it’s another question. And also the employees of the National Security Committee, and the administration of these law enforcement agencies, because these employees could not act without the knowledge of their leadership. There is also Sani Abdykash. He is in prison on sexual assault against a transgender woman. Of course, he could be interested too! There are other cases as well,” Umarova said then.
Meanwhile, the District court of Ili in Almaty region found Sani Abdykash guilty of sexual assault and torture committed against Berkhodzhaeva. According to the verdict of the court, the former officer of the National Security Committee was sentenced to five and a half years in prison with serving a sentence in a medium security institution.
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