In a sign that Kazakhstan is intent of placing the recent shootouts in Aktobe at the feet of foreign parties, Interior Minister Kalmuhanbet Kasymov said on June 14 that investigators believe instructions for the attack were issued from Syria.
The international trail is just one out of multiple, sometimes outlandish, strands coming together to form the official account of the day of terror that claimed the lives of five civilians and three servicemen.
Authorities announced the conclusion on June 12 of what they dubbed an anti-terrorist operation after detaining the last suspected attacker.
Nurgali Bilisbekov, the deputy head of the National Security Committee, or KNB, explained in a post-operation briefing that the armed group appeared intent on capturing government buildings.
“According to preliminary data, after seizing the firearms, the terrorists intended to attack penitentiaries and administrative buildings,” Bilisbekov said.
Bilisbekov said only timely reaction from special forces troops prevented the plan from being fulfilled.
Kasymov offered the most detailed official version of events to date in his remarks to the press.
“The total number [of people involved in the attack], as it has been accurately established, is 45 people. But when they declared jihad and left their flats, 19 of them backed out. We have identified them all now and are interrogating them,” he said.
One can only imagine to what kind of interrogation Kasymov is referring. When he was sitting with reporters in the police station building in the western city of Zhanaozen in December 2011, men suspected of involvement in the unrest at the time were being ruthlessly pummelled by police officers in the floors above.
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