Interior Minister of Kazakhstan Baurzhan Mukhamedzhanov announced in Alma-Ata yesterday that law enforcement agencies had detained organizer of the abduction of opposition leader Altynbek Sarsenbayev and his accomplices. Sarsenbayev was eventually found dead. As far as the minister is concerned, the opposition leader aka entrepreneur was killed in precisely in his businessman's capacity. Opposition in the meantime calls it a political assassination, implies that the upper echelons of state power may be involved, and urges the investigation to hurry or witnesses will start disappearing.

The bodies of Sarsenbayev, 43, his driver, and bodyguard were found not far from Alma-Ata on February 13. At first, local observers and activists of Movement For Fair Kazakhstan Sarsenbayev had been involved with did not insist on political motives of assassination and were content to wait for the first results of the investigation.

Sarsenbayev's funeral, however, resulted in an anti-government demonstration, its participants blaming the authorities for assassination of the opposition leader who had dared accuse president's daughter Dariga Nazarbayeva herself. In 2004, Sarsenbayev went public claiming that Nazarbayeva's media holding was absorbing electronic media outlets, putting an end to freedom of expression in the country, and embezzling state funds to boot. Aware of the ramifications, President Nursultan Nazarbayev took investigation of Sarsenbayev's death under personal control.

The president returned from a vacation abroad, yesterday, and Mukhamedzhanov immediately called a briefing to proclaim the crime as good as solved. He said that there were six criminals in all (one organizer and five accomplices) and that all six were in a detention cell now. Their names are not revealed in the interests of the investigation.

"The investigation established that the organizer told his accomplices to kidnap a certain businessmen and bring him to a specified location. The organizer offered his accomplices $25,000," Mukhamedzhanov said. "The accomplices agreed. They flagged down the victims' Toyota Camry at about 9 p.m. on February 11, kidnapped the men inside, and brought them to Malaya Stanitsa."

Once the kidnapped were brought there, the minister explained, "they were pushed into another car, as yet unidentified, and driven to the Koktyube Gorge" where the bodies were later found.

This hypothesis implies that the Kazakh police promptly solved the crime. Unofficial reports indicate that the abductors were betrayed by reckless use of one of their victims' cell phones. Observers point out, however, that the arrest of the abductors alone was reported, not that of the murderers. Mukhamedzhanov did not even mention the latter.

The report on the triumph of law enforcement agencies was made simultaneously with appearance of an officer of the American FBI in Alma-Ata. The Kazakh authorities had appealed to the Americans for help. The opposition had no objections believing that the presence of an American expert would guarantee objectivity of the investigation. It is the American who is expected now to confirm or denounce claims of the Kazakh opposition that the corridors of power are involved in the assassination.

Opposition activists assigned to the Public Investigation Panel maintain that some men close to the upper echelons of republican law enforcement agencies are involved. They fear that these men may arrange for witnesses to disappear without a trace and therefore urge the authorities to hurry.

Kommersant, February 21, 2006, p. 10