Prosecutor asks court to imprison Kyrgyz opposition party leader for 10 years
BISHKEK/JALAL-ABAD. March 14 (Interfax) - Kamchybek Tashiyev, a member of the Kyrgyz opposition parliamentary faction Ata-Zhurt (Fatherland), may be sentenced up to 10 years in prison for an attempt to violently seize power.
Speaking at a hearing at a Bishkek court on Thursday, the prosecutor asked the court to sentence Tashiyev to ten years and two other parliamentarians representing Ata-Zhurt, Sadyr Zhaparov and Talant Mamytov, to nine years in a high security penitentiary.
A rally in support for the Kumtor mountainous gold mine's nationalization in Bishkek on October 3, 2012, grew into unrest and attempts to break into the parliament building. The prosecution insists that the three parliamentarians had organized both the rally and the subsequent disturbances, which ended in police having to use force to dissolve the rally.
Another defendant, former Kyrgyz Military Prosecutor Kubatbek Kozhonaliyev, who acted as a moderator at the October 3 rally, could face up to 8 years in prison.
Meanwhile, supporters of the arrested parliamentarians are continuing a protest rally in Tashiyev's and Mamytov's hometown of Jalal-Abad, demanding their release and absolute acquittal.
The protesters have pitched two yurts in the city center, and 15 to 20 members of the protest headquarters are staying there permanently.
Most of the demonstrators who gathered in front of the Jalal-Abad town administration last week have returned home at Tashiyev's request, but the members of the protest headquarters are determined to continue their action until the court pronounces its ruling on the parliamentarians.