A court in Kazakhstan sentenced a former top police officer to ten years in prison on Friday for abuse of power and torture during last year’s unrest.
Protests over fuel costs occurred in the energy-rich former Soviet republic in January 2022.
According to the official count, they were ruthlessly crushed, and 238 people perished.
Serik Kudebayev was the chief of the police department in Almaty, which was hard hit by the riots.
According to a statement issued by the Prosecutor General’s Office on Friday, Kudebayev was convicted of abuse of power and torture during the riots.
It said that with Kudebayev’s “tacit consent” 23 people had been tortured on January 7-16, 2022.
The former police chief has maintained his innocence.
Kudebayev was sentenced to prison after he attempted to flee, flying to Turkey via neighbouring Kyrgyzstan. He was detained and brought back to Kazakhstan.
On Monday, Karim Masimov, the head of Kazakhstan’s security service at the time of the unrest, was found guilty of “high treason” and sentenced to 18 years in prison.
Authorities have sought to present Masimov, the head of the National Security Committee during the riots, as the mastermind of a plot to overthrow President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev on the back of the protests.
