A three-year jail sentence has been passed by a court in the southern city of Taraz passed on Ramazan Esergepov, the owner and editor of the Kazakh weekly Alma Ata Info, on charges of gathering and divulging classified documents under articles 172 and 339 of the Kazakh criminal code, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported.
The trial, which ended on August 8 with Esergepov also being banned from publishing a newspaper for two years, had been held behind closed doors since it began on April 23 on the grounds that state secrets were involved. He was arrested last January after publishing a letter revealing the links between a businessman and the National Security Committee (KNB).
“This outrageous sentence ends a prosecution that was marred by irregularities from the outset,” Paris-based RSF said, urging the court that hears Esergepov’s appeal to overturn his conviction on the grounds that it violates free expression and democracy.
“Esergepov was just doing his professional and civic duty by exposing the complicity between businessmen and the KNB,” it said. “It is the KNB’s representatives who should have been on trial, not the journalist.”
Among the many serious irregularities was Esergepov’s detention from the time of his arrest on January 6 until now and the authorities’ refusal to let him see this family during these past seven months or receive appropriate medical attention his cardio-vascular problems.
All this violated article 9 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which Kazakhstan ratified in 2006. Article 9, which concerns the rights of people being prosecuted, condemns arbitrary detention. Esergepov also had to defend himself during the trial, although the Kazakh constitution gives everyone the right to be defended by the lawyer of their choice.
The court also refused to hear key defence witnesses such as Rozlana Taukina, the head of Journalist in Danger, and Sergey Utkin, a legal expert who had examined the documents gathered and published by Esergepov and had concluded that they were not classified because they had not been included in any register of classified documents as required by Kazakh law.
Although it was the KNB that lodged a complaint against Esergepov with the Taraz court, the court allowed the KNB to act as expert witness in the case. The KNB was also represented by the lawyer of its choice, a right that Esergepov was denied.
Esergepov was arrested by KNB members while hospitalised in Almaty on January 6. His arrest was prompted by a report he had published in his newspaper on November 21, 2008 under the headline “Who really runs our country, the president or the KNB?” It included a letter exposing the ties between businessman Sultan Makhmadov and KNB officials.
Esergepov, who always denied the charges, is planning to appeal.
Kazakhstan is scheduled to take over the rotating presidency of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe next year. It was ranked 125th out of 173 countries in last year’s RSF press freedom index.
