Watchdog

The leader of a group seeking to create the opposition Democratic Party of Kazakhstan, Zhanbolat Mamai, has been detained on the eve of a planned protest in Almaty.

Mamai's wife, Inga Imanbai, posted video of Mamai's February 21 detention on Facebook:

The detention occurred outside a courthouse in the city of Kaskelen, near Almaty, where Mamai was attending a hearing on the case of fellow Democratic Party initiative group member Zhanbol Rakhmetulla, who had been detained earlier in the day.

Police in Kaskelen did not respond to requests for comment on Mamai's detention.

In 2017, Mamai was convicted on money-laundering charges that he and his supporters say were politically motivated and given a three-year suspended sentence, which is still in force.

The initiative group to form the Democratic Party was legally registered by the Justice Ministry in December.The group planned to hold a congress in Almaty on February 22, but canceled it on February 19 because of the arrests and detentions of party activists.

Authorities have reportedly detained dozens of party supporters in cities around the country, most of them for allegedly participating in earlier unsanctioned demonstrations. Kazakh law requires that a party's founding congress be attended by at least 1,000 people.

Instead of the congress, Mamai's group called on supporters to attend a February 22 protest in the center of Almaty.

Human rights proponents have said Kazakhstan’s law on public gatherings contradicts international standards as it requires preliminary permission from authorities to hold rallies and envisions prosecution for organizing and participating in unsanctioned rallies even though the nation's constitution guarantees its citizens the right of free assembly.

During a working visit to Nur-Sultan earlier this month, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo lauded what he said was a "real improvement in Kazakhstan" and "real changes" since President Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev came to power in March 2019 following the resignation of Nursultan Nazarbaev, who ruled the country for nearly 30 years.

MOSCOW -- A Kyrgyz citizen who spent 13 months in Russian custody over a deadly explosion that brought down part of an apartment building and killed at least 39 people in the Urals city of Magnitogorsk on New Year's Eve in 2018 says he was tortured while under arrest and will seek justice.

Khusnidin Zainabidinov, a 30-year-old ethnic Uzbek, told RFE/RL on February 20 that officers from Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) tortured him, broke his nose and ribs, and used electric shocks to make him "confess" to planting a bomb in the apartment block in Magnitogorsk.

Zainabidinov said he spent seven months in FSB detention and six months in a deportation camp before being released on February 10 after his involvement in the deadly explosion failed to be proven.

"I have been tortured for nothing for such a long time. I came to Moscow seeking justice. I want the officers [who tortured me] to be held accountable. If need be, I will go as far as the European Court of Human Rights," Zainabidinov said, adding that a Moscow-based human rights group is helping him at the moment.

Russian authorities said at the time that the most likely cause of the blast that destroyed a whole section of an apartment block in Magnitogorsk, 1,400 kilometers southeast of Moscow, was a gas leak.

After the extremist group Islamic State (IS) claimed responsibility for the explosion, the federal Investigative Committee said that no traces of explosives were found in tests of material from the site.

Several deadly apartment-building explosions in Russia in the past 25 years have been blamed on militants from the North Caucasus, where Russian troops fought two devastating wars against Chechen separatists, and an Islamist insurgency stemming from the conflicts still simmers in the region.

Household-gas blasts have also been blamed for many such disasters.