The head of Kyrgyzstan’s State National Security Committee (GKNB), Kamchybek Tashiyev, says someone was plotting to kill him, and it is not the first time, and it is not only Tashiyev people want to assassinate.
On November 20, Tashiyev said he received an anonymous letter with a flash drive that contained a death threat. Tashiyev also remarked that already “5-6 assassination attempts were prepared against me,” and “GKNB officers prevented two attempts on the life of President Sadyr Japarov.”
Normally this would be amazing, even chilling news.
However, Japarov and Tashiyev have been uncovering so many plots, some rather dubious, to overthrow the government since they bulldozed their way to power in late 2020 that it is difficult to gauge the seriousness of these assassination claims.
According to the GKNB, by November 25, those responsible for this most recent threat were already apprehended.
Surveillance cameras outside a GKNB station in Bishkek recorded the person who dropped off the letter with the threat. He turned out to be a homeless man who delivered the letter after a person identified only by his initials “Zh. A. S.” offered him food in exchange for dropping off the letter.
Zh. A. S. was identified as a former Kyrgyz military pilot who served in the CIS peacekeeping force guarding Tajikistan’s border with Afghanistan in the mid-1990s.
The suspect was convicted twice. It was not mentioned for which crimes, but the GKNB did say he had been plotting “for a long time” to kill Tashiyev.
A report from Kyrgyzstan’s KNEWS media outlet included a curious comment attributed to the GKNB that the suspect was connected to “intelligence services of foreign states and destructive forces, pursuing interests in destabilizing the socio-political situation in the Kyrgyz Republic…“
The Mafia
Since 2023, Japarov’s government has been waging the fiercest campaign in Kyrgyzstan’s history against organized crime, and Tashiyev and the GKNB have been leading this battle.
Tashiyev alluded to this in his November 20 comments.
“When I started fighting organized crime groups and others, I knew that such threats would exist,” Tashiyev said, adding, “I knew they would put pressure on me to give up the fight.”
Certainly, the campaign against organized crime has made the government, and Tashiyev specifically, some powerful enemies.
Raimbek “Millions” Matraimov amassed a fortune when he was deputy chairman of Kyrgyzstan’s Customs Service from 2015-2017, and even then, people knew he was an organized crime leader.
He was so powerful that when Sadyr Japarov was catapulted from a prison cell into the president’s office when unrest broke out in Kyrgyzstan in October 2020, there were suspicions that Matraimov’s wealth and clout backed this meteoric ascent.If that is true, Matraimov misjudged Japarov.
In early October 2023, the GKNB killed Kamchybek Asanbek, alias Kamchy Kolbaev, alias Kolya Kyrgyz, while trying to arrest him at a Bishkek restaurant. Kolbayev was believed to be the top kingpin of the organized criminal world in Kyrgyzstan.
Matraimov fled Kyrgyzstan shortly after that.
Kyrgyz authorities started confiscating Matraimov’s assets in Kyrgyzstan and searching for, and expelling members of parliament who had ties to Matraimov. (One parliamentary deputy was Matraimov’s brother Iskender.)
In late March 2024, the GKNB detained five Azerbaijanis in Bishkek who were identified as members of a transnational organized crime group sent by Matraimov, who was in Azerbaijan, to kill “top government officials.”
The Azerbaijani government extradited Matraimov back to Kyrgyzstan on March 26, where he was immediately taken into custody.
Rare Events
There have been reported assassination plots of government officials before in Kyrgyzstan, though not so many as Tashiyev says have been made against him and President Japarov in the last four years.
In September 2000, Topchubek Turgunaliyev and six others were convicted of plotting to assassinate then-President Askar Akayev. Turgunaliyev was the co-chairman of the opposition Erkin Kyrgyzstan party and a vocal opponent of Akayev.
He had been imprisoned before and named a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International.
Despite being sentenced to 16 years in prison for plotting the kill the president, Akayev pardoned Turgunaliyev in August 2001.
In September 2002, Kyrgyzstan’s then-Security Council Secretary Misir Ashirkulov was wounded when someone threw a grenade at him as he was driving home.
In March 2005, just after Akayev was ousted in a revolution, there was a reported plot to kill acting President Kurmanbek Bakiyev.
In July that same year, a crowd supporting a presidential candidate whose registration was rejected stormed the government building in Bishkek in protest. The head of Kyrgyzstan’s Security Council at that time, Miroslav Niyazov, said the group planned to killed Bakiyev, and acting-prime ministers Daniyar Usenov and Adakhan Madumarov.
In September 2006, a group of men blocked a road outside Bishkek late at night and waylaid a vehicle in what was reported to be an attempt to kill two members of parliament. The men pulled the two deputies from their car and started beating them, but the deputies were able to fend off their attackers after a fight that allegedly lasted an hour.
The two MPs were Sadyr Japarov and Kamchybek Tashiyev.
Another Assassination Attempt?
Both Japarov and Tashiyev say they have broad public support for the way they are running the country, and this appears to be true.
However, more people have been detained for calling for the overthrow of the government or planning to assassinate top government officials in the four years Japarov has been in power than in the nearly 30 years of Kyrgyzstan’s independence prior to his presidency.
The details of the middle-aged veteran who sent a bum to deliver the threat to Tashiyev are being kept secret while the investigation proceeds.
Raimbek Matraimov, meanwhile, who Tashiyev once called a “good guy,” was released from custody on November 11 after paying back $200 million of the money he stole – Matraimov is alleged to have laundered some $700 million – under condition he not leave Kyrgyzstan.
In most countries plotting to kill top officials is punishable by long prison terms. So is calling for the overthrow of the government.
However, Japarov and Tashiyev seem a bit like the boys who cried wolf at this point.
There really could be people who would like to kill them or oust them from power, but such claims are becoming so common that it is becoming difficult to take them seriously anymore.
