All news on the topic: Temirov Live

For years, Kamchybek Tashiev was considered the co-ruler of Kyrgyzstan, transforming the country’s security agency into a shadowy empire with its own kindergartens, billions in seized assets, and a stifling grip on citizens’ lives. Now he’s been convicted of plotting a violent power grab. What happened? And what’s next?

Interpol has rejected a request from Kyrgyz authorities to issue an international warrant for the co-founder of one of the country’s leading independent media outlets, calling the request politically motivated.

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.