Astana, Apr 30 (EFE).- Kazakhstan’s former Interior Minister Erlan Turgumbayev has been detained on charges of abuse of power for his actions during the January 2022 riots that claimed 238 lives, the Central Asian country’s Prosecutor General’s Office said Tuesday.
The detention of Turgumbayev, 61, interior minister between February 2019 and January 2022, took place on Monday, according to a statement issued by the Prosecutor General’s Office, which did not provide details of the investigation for containing state secrets.
After his dismissal as minister, Turgumbayev, a lieutenant general in the police, was appointed presidential adviser, a position he left in August 2022.
In March, the former minister was questioned as part of a criminal investigation against members of the police force for breach of law and order and torture of detainees during the riots.
The protests began on January 2, 2022, initially over the doubling of the price of liquefied gas, used in Kazakhstan as a cheap alternative to gasoline.
The demonstrations, spurred by citizen discontent with economic and political elites and corruption, quickly devolved into riots and were suppressed by Kazakh forces in an “anti-terrorist” operation.
Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev called the riots an attempted coup d’état perpetrated by “armed bandits” and “international terrorists.”
Given the seriousness of the situation, Tokayev requested help from the CSTO, a regional security organization consisting of Russia, Kazakhstan, Armenia, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, which sent a contingent of just over 2,000 men. EFE