Coverup Alleged in Kazakhstan Killing

Relatives of a slain opposition leader in Kazakhstan accused authorities Tuesday of engaging in a coverup after a court curtailed further testimony in the trial of 10 suspects.

The decision came last week after a key defendant in the politically sensitive case named high officials as organizers of the kidnapping and murder and another defendant appeared ready to second those allegations.

“It is obvious that state structures are involved in his death,” the family of Altynbek Sarsenbayev said in a statement Tuesday. “The organizers of this trial tried their best to lift any responsibility from the state for this crime.”

The prosecution charges that Sarsenbayev and two other people were kidnapped by rogue members of an elite national security unit and killed by a former police officer in February at the instigation of a man who until his arrest was the administrator of the Kazakh Senate.

Authorities said in March that all the suspects had confessed, and that the administrator had acted out of personal motives.

Opposition supporters argue that the chain of responsibility must go higher, and that authorities are afraid to allow a public examination of evidence that might lead to the inner circle of President Nursultan A. Nazarbayev.

“It was a political murder, but the court doesn’t want to examine the real facts,” Rysbek Sarsenbayev, the slain politician’s brother, said in a telephone interview Tuesday. “The judge bluntly and doggedly follows the prosecution’s version.”

Relatives have decided to boycott the remainder of the trial because “it is a setup designed by the leadership of the country to cover up the real motives of this crime and the real culprits,” he added.

At the trial, which began in June, former Senate administration chief Yerzhan Utembayev and Rustam Ibragimov, the police official, pleaded not guilty. They could face the death penalty.

In testimony Aug. 2, Ibragimov linked the murder to Senate Speaker Nurtai Abykayev and then-security chief Nartai Dutbayev, who quit to take responsibility for the alleged involvement of his agency’s employees. The defendant also named Alexei Kikshayev, a former religious affairs official in Kazakhstan’s government, as one of those involved.

“They decided to make me a scapegoat, and this is why I am disclosing the names,” he told the court, according to the Interfax-Kazakhstan news agency.

Ibragimov alleged that Abykayev and Dutbayev intended to stage a coup against Nazarbayev within the next two or three years, the news agency reported. As Senate speaker, Abykayev is next in line for the presidency.

Vladimir Bozhko, first deputy chairman of the Kazakh National Security Committee, dismissed the allegations as “nonsense.”

Shortly after the arrest of Utembayev in February, authorities said that he had sent a letter to the president in which he confessed to ordering the crime.

Last week, Utembayev expressed a willingness to speak about Ibragimov’s allegations. Instead of seeking his testimony, however, the presiding judge announced Thursday that no more witnesses would be called and the trial would move on to closing arguments by lawyers.

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Times staff writer Sergei L. Loiko contributed to this report.