BISHKEK (TCA) — A court in Bishkek has sentenced a former Kyrgyz prime minister’s son, Altynbek Muraliev, to 12 years in prison on espionage charges, RFE/RL’s Kyrgyz Service reported.
Ainura Toktosheva, a spokeswoman for Kyrgyzstan’s Supreme Court, told RFE/RL that Bishkek’s Birinchi Mai district court on May 17 found Muraliev guilty of passing classified materials to the secret services of an undisclosed foreign country.
Muraliev was sentenced the same day at the closed-door trial.
“He [Muraliev] has been convicted for committing a crime in line with article 292 (High treason) of the Criminal Code of the Kyrgyz Republic and sentenced to 12 years in a maximum-security prison and his property confiscation,” the press service of the Supreme Court said.
Muraliev was working as the head of the Kyrgyz Government’s department on foreign relations when he was arrested on November 1, 2014.
It was earlier reported that he was detained in November 2014 while he was trying to leave Kyrgyzstan through the Kyrgyz-Kazakh border. The State Committee of National Security of Kyrgyzstan then said that Muraliev allegedly collected and passed classified information to China.
Muraliev is the son of Amangeldy Muraliev, who was Kyrgyzstan’s prime minister from 1999 to 2000.
Altynbek Muraliev graduated from a university in Turkey in the early 1990s and later worked for several years at Turkey’s embassy in Bishkek.
