A court in western Kazakhstan has awarded a man compensation for being wrongly detained and prosecuted after a deadly state crackdown on protesters in January 2022.
The court in Aqtobe ruled that 3.5 million tenge ($6,500) should be paid to Aslanbek Omarov for moral and material damage he endured after being detained by security forces on January 9, 2022.
Omarov, who said he was tortured while being held in pretrial detention, was jailed for four months and held under house arrest for five months.
The ruling came in an appeal filed by Omarov, who had been seeking 40 million tenge ($86,000) in compensation.
"The pain I experienced can't be compensated with 3.5 million tenge; I lost my income and business. After my arrest, my pregnant wife and 2-year-old daughter were left without support," Omarov told RFE/RL, adding that, despite the awarded compensation falling far short of his demand, he would not appeal the court decision further.
"The fact that the government admitted its guilt is a victory for me," Omarov said.
Omarov was accused of "organizing mass disorder." According to officials, no evidence was found during an investigation.
In February last year, the Aqtobe court sentenced 16 people, including Omarov, to prison for their involvement in the January crackdowns during which two people were killed in the western Kazakh city.
One of them, Ruslanbek Zhubanazarov, was first accused of being a "terrorist," and was then adjudicated to have been an "accidental victim." His family has been compensated 7 million tenges ($15,272) from the People of Kazakhstan fund, which was set up in January 2022 immediately after the unrest.
The other Aqtobe resident who was fatally shot during January events, Faizulla Nurgeldin, was initially included in the accidental victims list. But when he died two months later, he was listed as a fatality.
More than 10,000 were detained in Kazakhstan after the January unrests. Few have received compensation.