Kyrgyzstan: courts are not interested in an effective investigation

The district and regional courts didn’t support the lawyers who intend to move the undecided criminal case on the murder of a resident of Ala-Buka district, which occurred in 2014, off the ground.

According to human rights activists, the district and regional courts are quite satisfied with the situation in which investigators haven’t intended to find the killers for eight years, although there were clearly clues in this case. For example, during the investigation, the wife of the murdered man pointed out the three suspects.

In May 2014, the corpse of her husband was found near the house with signs of a violent death. The victim had four children. But already in August of the same year, the investigator of the District Department of Internal Affairs of Ala-Buka issued a decision to suspend the investigation, which the victim’s wife became aware of only in April 2021. The family hoped for seven years that the killers would be found and brought to justice. So they had to turn to human rights defenders for help.

The lawyer of the human rights organization “Justice” in Jalal-Abad, Ravshan Abdullayev, wrote the letters to the District Department of Internal Affairs of Ala-Buka, the Department of Internal Affairs of Jalal-Abad region, as well as to the District, Regional and the Prosecutor General’s Office.

“This criminal case was suspended due to the fact that the person to be charged as an accused hasn’t been identified. That is, no evidence of the guilt of any particular person in the commission of the crime has been collected in the case,” the Department of Internal Affairs noted. Other authorities just referred to this letter.

Then the lawyer appealed first to the District Court of Ala-Buka, then to the Regional Court of Jalal-Abad, so that they recognized the investigator’s decision to suspend the investigation as unfounded.

The courts didn’t satisfy the lawyer’s statement, motivating their refusal by the fact that it was necessary to apply not for the recognition of the investigator’s decision as unfounded, but for the actions or inaction of the investigator of the District Department of Internal Affairs. According to the court of second instance, the investigator has the right to carry out investigative actions even on a suspended criminal case.

The next time, the lawyer did just that – he went to court already regarding the inaction of the investigator from the District Department of Internal Affairs. The investigating judge of the District Court of Ala-Buka again left the complaint unsatisfied, but that time due to the expiration of the time limit for appeal. Although the deadlines were not missed by the lawyer. And the judicial board of the Regional Court of Jalal-Abad upheld the decision of the court of first instance, explaining its decision on the same grounds: it’s necessary to appeal against the actions or inaction of the investigator to higher authorities and the Prosecutor’s Office, since conducting an investigation is the functional duties of the investigator, and the courts have nothing to do with it. At the same time, the judicial board didn’t even pay attention to the arguments of the defense about the illegality and groundlessness of the refusal by the officials of the District Department of Internal Affairs of Ala-Buka.

For the subsequent letters to the Departments of Internal Affairs and the Prosecutor’s Office, he received similar answers: the suspended criminal case cannot be resumed, since decisions of the District and Regional Courts have been issued on it. A vicious circle formed with reference to each other.

At the same time, everyone tried to emphasize that the investigation had just been suspended and could be resumed at any moment. But, according to human rights activists, and as practice shows, such temporary suspensions can be equated with the termination of a criminal case. Human rights activists face this on a regular basis.

According to the lawyer of the human rights organization “Justice” in Jalal-Abad, Utkir Djabbarov, due to the unlawful actions of officials of the District Department of Internal Affairs of Ala-Buka and the co/wphe murdered person to life and to effective legal protection are violated.