Prosecutor Seeks Lengthy Prison Terms In Killing Of Late Kazakh Activist's Son

NUR-SULTAN — Prosecutors have asked a court in Nur-Sultan to sentence six defendants in the high-profile case of the killing of the teenage son of late Kazakh civil rights activist Dulat Aghadil.

Zhanbolat Aghadil, 17, was stabbed to death in a Nur-Sultan suburb in November, just 10 months after his father mysteriously died while in police custody.

Prosecutors on April 22 asked the Inter-District Court on Criminal Cases in the Kazakh capital to find defendant Omirzhan Rakhmet guilty of murdering Zhanbolat Aghadil and sentence him to 18 years in prison.

Sentences for the other five defendants in the case, who were charged with concealing a crime and failing to report a crime, should range between four and five years in prison, they added.

Rakhmet’s lawyer told reporters his client pleaded not guilty.

In February 2020, Zhanbolat Aghadil’s father, a well-known 43-year-old civil rights activist, died while being held in pretrial detention in Nur-Sultan just hours after being arrested for failing to comply with a court order to report to local police.

Authorities said Aghadil died from a heart attack, but his family and fellow rights defenders say he had no history of heart issues and suspected the real cause of death was being covered up.

Rallies were held in Nur-Sultan and other cities in February and March to demand a thorough investigation into his death.