{"id":158776,"date":"2021-05-11T12:35:20","date_gmt":"2021-05-11T12:35:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.radiofree.org\/?p=197203"},"modified":"2021-05-11T12:35:20","modified_gmt":"2021-05-11T12:35:20","slug":"kazakh-activist-abishev-again-denied-early-release","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/05\/11\/kazakh-activist-abishev-again-denied-early-release\/","title":{"rendered":"Kazakh Activist Abishev Again Denied Early Release"},"content":{"rendered":"
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QAPSHAGHAI, Kazakhstan — A court in Kazakhstan has again rejected an early-release request for ailing activist Kenzhebek Abishev, who has been recognized by domestic human rights organizations as a political prisoner.<\/p>\n

Abishev’s lawyer, Gulnar Zhuaspaeva, told RFE\/RL that the court ruled on May 11 that Abishev cannot be granted early release, again rejecting his argument for time off due to good behavior and concerns over his health.<\/p>\n

Last week, the chairwoman of the Aman-Saulyq Human Rights Foundation, Bakhyt Tumenova, said that Abishev’s condition was worrisome, as he suffers from multiple medical conditions and should be released as soon as possible.<\/p>\n

In mid-April, Abishev was rushed from prison to the hospital in Qapshaghai as his condition word due to a hunger strike that he started to protest the cancellation of his release in February on parole and prison conditions.<\/p>\n

Physicians then diagnosed Abishev with coronary heart disease. It is not clear at the moment if Abishev is still on his hunger strike.<\/p>\n

On February 1, the Qapshaghai court ruled that Abishev could be released on February 16, more than three years early, for good behavior while in prison, a procedure allowed by Kazakh law.<\/p>\n

However, the Almaty regional prosecutor’s office appealed the ruling at the very last moment, arguing that the 53-year-old activist’s good behavior in custody was not enough to secure his early release, since he still had more than three years to serve.<\/p>\n

The court then scrapped the move, leaving Abishev in prison.<\/p>\n

Abishev was sentenced to seven years in prison in December 2018 after he and two other activists were found guilty of planning a “holy war” because they were spreading the ideas of the banned Democratic Choice of Kazakhstan (DVK) movement. His prison term was later cut by eight months.<\/p>\n

Abishev pleaded not guilty, calling the case against him politically motivated.<\/p>\n

The DVK was founded by Mukhtar Ablyazov, an outspoken critic of the Kazakh government who has been living in France for several years.<\/p>\n

Ablyazov has been organizing unsanctioned anti-government rallies in Kazakhstan via the Internet in recent years.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n

This post was originally published on Radio Free<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

QAPSHAGHAI, Kazakhstan \u2014 A court in Kazakhstan has again rejected an early-release request for ailing activist Kenzhebek Abishev, who has been recognized by domestic human rights organizations as\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3238,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[332,4,23,26],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158776"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3238"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=158776"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158776\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":158777,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158776\/revisions\/158777"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=158776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=158776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=158776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}