Orientalist Syroyezhkin, convicted of treason, loses Kazakh citizenship
ALMATY. Oct 15 (Interfax) - Almaty's Specialized Inter-District Court on Criminal Cases has stripped academic of oriental studies and political analyst Konstantin Syroyezhkin, who was earlier convicted of treason and given a ten-year prison sentence, of Kazakh citizenship.
"After serving his sentence, Syroyezhkin will be deported from Kazakhstan based on Article 51 [deportation of a foreigner or a non-citizen from Kazakhstan] of the Criminal Code and will be banned from entering the territory of the republic for five years," the court's press service told Interfax on Tuesday.
An Almaty court on October 7 found Syroyezhkin, 63, guilty of treason and sentenced him to 10 years in prison.
"The convict will serve his sentence in a maximum-security penitentiary," the court said.
The criminal case against Syroyezhkin was launched in January and he was arrested on February 19. The Kazakh National Security Committee declined to provide details of the case.
Syroyezhkin is a political analyst, oriental scholar, and expert on China. Starting 2006, he worked as the chief researcher at the Institute for Strategic Studies with the president of Kazakhstan.
According to media reports, he was the chief consultant of the doctoral thesis of incumbent President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev "The foreign policy of Kazakhstan at the time of the establishment of the new world order" that was defended in 2001 at the Institute for Current and International Problems of the Russian Diplomatic Academy in Moscow.
There is, however, no official confirmation of these reports.