ALMATY, Kazakhstan -- When Kyrgyz journalist Bolot Temirov's wife and their colleague were sentenced to multiyear prison terms last week in Kyrgyzstan, the forcibly exiled investigative reporter was not surprised.
"At the beginning of this month I received information that the government is readying an operation to kill me," he said. "At the time I didn't pay any attention to it. But now it is clear that this government is capable of anything."
Temirov -- who was stripped of his Kyrgyz passport and expelled to Russia in 2022 -- said that after a Bishkek court on October 10 gave his wife, Makhabat Tajibek-kyzy, and reporter Azamat Ishenbekov, six- and five-year jail sentences, respectively, on charges of "creating an organized criminal group" and "calling for mass riots." Both worked with Temirov for the anti-corruption investigation group Temirov Live.
It probably wasn't just those sentences -- described as "retaliatory" and "arbitrary" by international media watchdogs -- that Temirov had in mind when he wrote those words.
Because in addition to the harsh punishment meted out to two of his colleagues, the judge also ruled to commit the 12-year-old child that Temirov shares with his spouse to the care of the state.
Tajibek-kyzy's lawyer has insisted that decision will not stand, since the couple have relatives in Kyrgyzstan who can act as the child's guardian.
But it is just one of a number of details from the detention, prosecution, and judicial treatment of Temirov and his current and former colleagues pointing to the Kyrgyz authorities' vindictive streak regarding the country's most relentless investigative journalist.
A collage shows Tai-Muras Tashiev (right) and his father, Kamchibek Tashiev (in military uniform).
And that treatment in turn points to a consistent theme in the extended crackdown on independent media under President Sadyr Japarov: the more intense a media outlet's focus on graft and nepotism, the more forceful the state backlash.
The Kids Are Alright!
Just over a week before the journalists received their sentences, Japarov was on the defensive.
In comments published by state media outlet Kabar on October 2, Japarov justified the involvement of top ally and national security chief Kamchibek Tashiev's son in the construction of Kyrgyzstan's first private toll road, which is being built in the south.
Far from reflecting nepotism, Japarov said people should "thank" 30-year-old Tai-Muras Tashiev and his company for building a road that other businesses did not want to build because the road would not be immediately profitable.
"If Tai-Muras wanted to harm the state, why would he have used his own company? Since he knows very well that if this were to happen it would quickly become publicly known," Japarov argued.
This is the kind of shrug-of-the-shoulders logic that the Kyrgyz president uses regularly in his comments to Kabar, safe in the knowledge that there won't be any follow-up questions.
But he would not have been raising the topic at all had the younger Tashiev's involvement in the project via two companies of which he was listed as an ultimate beneficiary not been the subject of a Temirov Live broadcast the day before.
"Allocating projects of state importance to your children -- this is the reality of our times," said Temirov in the October 1 report that has been viewed nearly 300,000 times on YouTube.
Japarov did not address the reporting in the same video about the involvement of Tai-Muras Tashiev's co-owned company in the construction of mini-hydroelectric plants.
But curiously, he did use the Kabar commentary to disclose that his own son, Rustam Japarov, was currently seeking investors to build Central Asia's biggest golf course.
And he credited both young men for their actions in what he deemed the public interest.
"When did the children of previous presidents ever help out? Instead, they said, 'Give!' didn't they? The main thing is that [children of leaders] don't cause damage to the state."
Investigative journalist Bolot Temirov gives an interview outside the courthouse in Bishkek on January 23, 2022.
'Family-Clan Rule'
Rustam Japarov is 27. Ironically, that is the same age as Temirov's colleague, Ishenbekov, a journalist who combines historic Kyrgyz bard traditions with modern-day hip-hop to tell stories about corruption.
Ishenbekov has been behind bars since January. So has Tajibek-kyzy, who complained in April that she was physically assaulted by prison guards -- a claim Kyrgyzstan's ombudsman backed up.
Rustam Japarov has been central in a number of Temirov Live investigations, as have his friends, whose rising business careers were the subject of a joint investigation involving independent outlet Kloop Media and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) in September 2023.
SEE ALSO: Closing The Kloop: Kyrgyzstan's Media Crackdown Becomes Farcical As Leading Journalism Foundation ShutteredNone of this constitutes "interference in the affairs of state," Sadyr Japarov said.
And the president has not commented on something that certainly would meet that definition -- a shocking interview by Temirov with a Kazakh businessman who admitted being forced to pay bribes worth tens of thousands of dollars every month to Sadyr Japrov's brother and nephew for the right to import and reexport the IQOS Heated Tobacco Products manufactured by Phillip Morris.
Eventually, the businessman said, he was squeezed out of the business completely and forced to import via other countries.
Those revelations go against the government's claims to have cleaned up the Customs Service, a long-lasting source of graft in Kyrgyzstan.
And while it was not possible to verify them independently, RFE/RL spoke to several people in Kazakhstan who knew Temirov's interviewee and confirmed his line of work.
National security boss Tashiev is often seen as one-half of a ruling "tandem" with the president.
It was around the time of the release of a January 2022 Temirov Live investigation into the Tashiev family's de facto capture of a state-owned oil refinery in the south of the country that the group and its founder began experiencing serious problems.
President Sadyr Japarov (right) and the head of the national security service, Kamchybek Tashiev (center)
Temirov was initially charged with narcotics possession after a dramatic armed raid on Temirov Live's office in January 2022.
That caused a public outcry, and he was subsequently acquitted by a court that took the unusual step of admonishing the security services deployed to detain him for their conduct.
But later that year, another Bishkek court found him guilty of forging his Kyrgyz passport, and Temirov was bizarrely deported to Russia, where he also held citizenship. Temirov now resides in Europe.
Since his first arrest, Kyrgyzstan has fallen around 50 places in the Reporters Without Borders World Press Freedom Index.
During that time, the authorities have attacked multiple media outlets, including RFE/RL's Kyrgyz Service, Radio Azattyk, which was blocked for several months, and Kloop Media, which remains blocked inside Kyrgyzstan, where its legal entity was forcibly liquidated.
Then there is the matter of the Russian-style "foreign agents" law, signed by Japarov in April, which is set to make life more and more complicated for any media receiving funding from abroad.
But arguably no other journalist has done more to expose what he calls Kyrgyzstan's return to "family-clan rule" under Japarov than Temirov.
For that reason alone, he might be right to fear for his life.