ASTANA -- A court in the Kazakh capital, Astana, has sentenced the former wife of a jailed nephew of the Central Asian country's former authoritarian president, Nursultan Nazarbaev, to seven years in prison on charges of abduction and actions aiding the commission of a crime.
The Baiqongyr district court No. 2 sentenced Gulmira Satybaldy on May 4.
In her final statement to the court, Satybaldy called the charges against her politically motivated.
Gulmira Satybaldy was arrested along with her ex-husband, Qairat Satybaldy, in March 2022. He was tried separately in September and sentenced to six years in prison after being found guilty of fraud and embezzlement.
She was also charged with embezzlement and the illegal appropriation of shares and assets of a number of enterprises. A trial on those charges is pending.
The probes launched against the couple are part of a series of investigations targeting relatives and allies of Nazarbaev.
Last week, courts in Kazakhstan's largest city, Almaty, sentenced in separate trials the former chief of police of the Almaty region, General Serik Kudebaev, and the former chief of the city's branch of the National Security Committee (KNB), Nurlan Mazhilov, to 10 and six years in prison respectively on charges of abuse of power during unprecedented anti-government protests that turned into deadly mass disorders in January 2022.
Also last week, a court in Astana gave former KNB chief Karim Masimov, known as a close ally of Nazarbaev for years, an 18-year prison term on charges of high treason, attempting to seize power by force, and abuse of office and power.
Masimov's former deputies, Anuar Sadyqulov, Daulet Erghozhin, and Marat Osipov, were sentenced to 16, 15, and three years in prison respectively at the same trial.
After the mass protests in early January 2022, the Kazakh regime began to quietly target Nazarbaev, his family, and other allies -- many of whom held powerful or influential posts in government, security agencies, and profitable energy companies.