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Kazakh opposition leader found shot dead
(Reuters)
Updated: 2006-02-14 09:09
A Kazakh former minister and leading member of the Central Asian state's
political opposition was found shot dead on Monday, police said.
The body of Altynbek Sarsenbaiuly, a 43-year-old critic of President
Nursultan Nazarbayev's government, was found along with two other corpses lying
beside a country road near Almaty, the country's biggest city.
All three men had gunshot wounds, police said in a statement on their
official Web site www.police.kz.
"The Interior Minister has taken the investigation under his personal
control," the statement said. It gave no other details.
Altynbek Sarsenbaiuly, Kazakhstan's opposition
politician attends an opposition bloc meeting in Almaty in this September
10, 2005 file photo. [Reuters/file] | Earlier on
Monday, the Kazakhstan Today news agency quoted unnamed sources as saying
Sarsenbaiuly had been hunting near Almaty.
Sarsenbaiuly briefly held a ministerial post in 2004 but resigned after three
months to protest against a September parliamentary election that he said was
rigged by the president's supporters.
Before joining the opposition he had been an ambassador to Russia and held
several ministerial posts.
He was the second prominent Kazakh opposition figure to die in mysterious
circumstances in recent months.
Zamanbek Nurkadilov, a former mayor of Almaty and close ally of Nazarbayev
who switched to the opposition in 2004, was found dead in November with three
gunshot wounds to the chest and head.
Police have said they suspect Nurkadilov committed suicide, but the
opposition said he was murdered and said they could not rule out a political
motive.
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