ALMATY, Kazakhstan -- An Uzbek citizen who says he was tortured after his arrest in Kazakhstan over deadly unrest in January that left 232 people dead has been released from custody after a court in Almaty handed him a suspended one-year prison term for taking part in the protests.
Kamshat Derbisalieva, the mother of 18-year-old Saken Talipov, told RFE/RL on July 20 that a court in Almaty handed down its ruling late in the evening on July 19.
Derbisalieva said that her son's lawyers have filed a lawsuit to identify investigators who, she says, tortured Talipov while he was in custody.
On February 10, Uzbekistan's consulate in Kazakhstan's largest city, Almaty, said the Uzbek Foreign Ministry had handed a note to Kazakhstan regarding the situation of Talipov, who was among more than a dozen Uzbek nationals arrested during the unrest.
Derbisalieva, who is a naturalized Kazakh citizen and lives in Almaty, told RFE/RL that her son was 17 at the time of his arrest.
In the wake of the violence that started with peaceful demonstrations in the western Kazakh town of Zhanaozen over fuel price hikes and led to anti-government protests across the country, Kazakh President Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev claimed that "20,000 extremists trained in terrorist camps abroad" attacked Almaty, and other regions.
Kazakh officials have not presented any evidence proving Toqaev's claim about the foreign terrorists, but have said that 232 people, including 19 law enforcement officers, were killed during the unrest, which spread across the country.
Human rights groups say the number of killed demonstrators was much higher than any of the various figures provided by officials. The groups have provided evidence that peaceful demonstrators and people who had nothing to do with the protests were among those killed.
The government has not published the names of those killed during or after the unrest -- which led to the removal of former President Nursultan Nazarbaev and his relatives from the political scene -- and has rejected calls by Kazakh and global human rights groups for an international probe into the deaths.
In late June, Deputy Prosecutor-General Aset Shyndaliev admitted that six people had been tortured to death after being arrested for taking part in the January protests. He said a number of security officers had been arrested in connection with the alleged torture.
The Prosecutor-General's Office said earlier that 25 people were officially considered victims of torture by hot irons during interrogations.