BISHKEK (TCA) — Authorities in Kyrgyzstan have charged former President Almazbek Atambayev with corruption, his lawyer Sergey Slesarev told 24.kg news agency.
The Interior Ministry has charged Atambayev over the illegal early release from prison in 2013 of one of the country’s most notorious crime bosses, Aziz Batukaev.
Atambayev will be placed in the pre-trial detention center of the State Committee for National Security until August 26, Slesarev said.
Batukaev was released after being diagnosed with leukemia.
His diagnosis was later found to have been falsified.
Batukaev, an ethnic Chechen, was sentenced in 2006 to nearly 17 years in prison for his involvement in several serious crimes, including the murders of a Kyrgyz lawmaker and an Interior Ministry official.
After his release, Batukaev immediately left for Russia’s North Caucasus region of Chechnya.
Kyrgyz special police forces arrested Atambayev on August 8 after they stormed his residential compound in Koi-Tash village near Bishkek defended by hundreds of Atambayev’s supporters.
Farid Niyazov, former head of the president’s administration under Atambayev and his close associate, has been detained over taking six special forces servicemen hostage during the first, failed special forces operation to detain Atambayev late on August 7, Kunduz Joldubayeva, deputy chairwoman of Atambayev’s Social Democratic Party told 24.kg on August 9.
