From: Justin Burke (JBurke@sorosny.org)
Date: Fri May 26 2000 - 11:33:54 EDT
Kazakh prosecutor stresses "heightened social danger" of coup plotters
Text of report by Kazakh Khabar TV on 26th May
[Presenter, over the view of trial: people behind bars, people sitting in a
room, standing up when the judges enter; files on table] In Ust-Kamenogorsk
[East Kazakhstan Region], the charges have been read out against a group of
defendants suspected of attempting to seize power in eastern Kazakhstan.
The trial is in its second month. There are 13 people in the dock. The
prosecutor has asked for a 19-year sentence, with the first five years
served in prison, for the head of the group, Viktor Kazimirchuk [Pugachev],
and for his main accomplices Vladimir Chernyshev and Konstantin Semyentsev
- 16 and 17 years in isolation with five of these years in prison. Albert
Urakayev and Nikolay Kalinovskiy - 14 years each, Sergey Bardin and
Aleksandr Rozhkov - 13 [each] and Dmitriy Kalinovskiy - 10. The prosecutor
has demanded four years' imprisonment each for Aleksey Poluzhuk, Gennadiy
Gerasimenko and Mikhail Matush, and for the only woman in the group, Olga
Vasiliyeva.
As the Kazakhstan Today agency reports, at the end of the court session, the
public prosecutor said: I quote: "I am far from thinking that the
defendants, with 14 petrol bombs, could have seized power. However, had not
this criminal group been rendered harmless in time, many innocent citizens
could have suffered. I ask the court to take into account the heightened
social danger of these persons."
All petitions brought in by the lawyers during the trial have been rejected
by the judge, Margarita Kislova.
Source: Khabar TV, Almaty, in Russian 0500 gmt 26 May 00
BBC Mon CAU 260500/** JF/KA
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