BISHKEK -- Altynbek Muraliev, the jailed son of a former Kyrgyz prime minister, has been transferred to a more lenient penal colony where convicts live close to their work facilities.
A spokeswoman for Kyrgyzstan's Penitentiary Service, Eleonora Sabatarova, told RFE/RL on October 31 that Muraliev was transferred to a penal settlement in mid-October.
He is expected to serve the remaining 3 years and 2 months of his prison sentence there.
Muraliev was sentenced to 12 years in prison in May 2016 after a court found him guilty of passing classified materials to the secret services of an undisclosed foreign country.
Muraliev was working as the head of the Kyrgyz government's department on foreign relations when he was arrested on November 1, 2014.
According to Sabatarova, the Supreme Court reduced Muraliev's prison term by two years. Each day of his detention before he was sent to a prison in northern Kyrgyzstan also is being counted as two days off his sentence, she said.
Muraliev is the son of Amangeldy Muraliev, Kyrgyzstan's prime minister from 1999 to 2000.
Altynbek Muraliev graduated from a university in Turkey in the early 1990s and later worked at Kyrgyzstan's consulate in Istanbul.
