All news on the topic: Bolot Temirov

A Kyrgyz court freed a prominent investigative journalist after 18 months behind bars, placing her under a travel ban as she awaits a retrial in a case widely condemned as an attack on free speech.

A Kyrgyz court has labeled three independent news outlets as "extremist" organizations and banned their publications, marking the latest escalation in a crackdown on media outlets investigating corruption and criticizing the government.

On Wednesday, a Kyrgyz court sentenced two former employees of Kloop, a leading investigative newsroom and OCCRP partner, to five years in prison and handed three years of probation to two former accountants, all charged with conspiring to “incite mass unrest,” officials said. Lawyers and Kloop management have called the case baseless.

This week, four former employees from Kyrgyzstan’s leading investigative newsroom, Kloop, stood trial in Bishkek, accused of conspiring to “incite mass unrest.”

Amid a crackdown on free expression, journalists from OCCRP’s local partner Temirov Live are confronted with the prospect of a draconian prison sentence on charges they insist are trumped up.

A Kyrgyz court ordered on Friday that four reporters, who were charged in January with “inciting mass unrest” through their investigative stories about corruption in the Central Asian country, remain in pre-trial detention until August 8, according to their editor, Bolot Temirov.