Skip to main content

Eurasianet

Main Menu

  • Regions
  • Topics
  • Media
  • About
  • Search
  • Newsletter
  • русский
  • Support us
X

Caucasus

Armenia
Azerbaijan
Georgia

Central Asia

Kazakhstan
Kyrgyzstan
Tajikistan
Turkmenistan
Uzbekistan

Conflict Zones

Abkhazia
Nagorno Karabakh
South Ossetia

Eastern Europe

Belarus
Moldova
Russia
The Baltics
Ukraine

Eurasian Fringe

Afghanistan
China
EU
Iran
Mongolia
Turkey
United Kingdom
United States
X

Environment

Economy

Politics

Kazakhstan's Bloody January 2022
Kyrgyzstan 2020 unrest

Security

Society

American diplomats in Central Asia
Arts and Culture
Coronavirus
Student spotlight
X

Visual Stories

Podcast
Video

Blogs

Tamada Tales
The Bug Pit

Podcasts

EurasiaChat
Expert Opinions
The Central Asianist
X
You can search using keywords to narrow down the list.
Kazakhstan, Central Asia

Kazakhstan: Court clears woman charged of incitement to revolt

Akberdi’s husband was jailed for three years on similar charges.

Almaz Kumenov Feb 6, 2019
Despite being rich in oil, western Kazakhstan has seen little of the major investment lavished on other parts of the country. (Photo: Wikipedia Commons) Despite being rich in oil, western Kazakhstan has seen little of the major investment lavished on other parts of the country. (Photo: Wikipedia Commons)

A court in western Kazakhstan on February 6 acquitted a local resident who was being tried for calling for the violent overthrow of the government, her lawyer told Eurasianet.

Zhanargul Sundetkaliyeva said that the judge in the Aktau court found no “evidence of criminal” intent by her client, Aigul Akberdi, who is a mother of four.

The verdict represents an extremely rare gesture of judicial clemency for Kazakhstan, which has prompted some to speculate about whether there may have been political motives behind the decision.

Akberdi’s husband, Ablovas Jumayev, was sentenced to three years in jail in September on similar charges. Jumayev appealed the ruling in December but the sentence was upheld.

Akberdi, 39, was accused by prosecutors of talking up revolution in February 2018 in the group of a messaging app linked to a banned opposition movement. Jumayev was convicted for purportedly doing the same through leafleting, but messaging apps are deemed a form of mass communication and their use consequently would, had Akberdi been found guilty, have incurred harsher treatment.

In her closing address to court on February 4, Akberdi denied the accusations against her and insisted she done nothing but spoken about pressing social issues.

The suggestion circulating in social media is that Akberdi’s acquittal may have happened because of a recent, unrelated event that has dominated the public conversation. On the night of February 4, a blaze at a rented makeshift house in the capital, Astana, claimed the lives of five children, the smallest of whom was just one year old. The impoverished parents were at work and had left the children unattended. 

This unspeakable tragedy has triggered fresh accusations that government officials — specifically, Labor and Social Protection Minister Madina Abylkasymova — are doing little or nothing to support large families. On February 6, hundreds of people, including mothers with children, organized a rally in Astana to demand the authorities do more to improve the lot of the most hard-up.

The optics of jailing a mother of four small children in the wake of those developments might have been poor.

Sundetkaliyeva, however, said she was not inclined to draw the connection. 

“It was the absence of evidence of Akberdi’s guilt that brought about the acquittal,” the lawyer said.

Sign up for Eurasianet's free weekly newsletter.

Almaz Kumenov is an Almaty-based journalist.

Sign up for Eurasianet's free weekly newsletter. Support Eurasianet: Help keep our journalism open to all, and influenced by none.

Related

Uzbekistan pursues dialogue with Afghanistan on fraught canal project
Why Kazakhs are growing less satisfied with life, and Kyrgyz more
Event | Activists hopeful UN conference will catalyze water action in Central Asia

Popular

Uzbekistan pursues dialogue with Afghanistan on fraught canal project
Deaths of Islamic figures highlight political and religious divide in Azerbaijan
Germany's Baerbock arrives in Tbilisi amid EU uncertainty
Nini Gabritchidze

Eurasianet

  • About
  • Team
  • Contribute
  • Republishing
  • Privacy Policy
  • Corrections
  • Contact
Eurasianet © 2023