ASTANA -- Kazakhstan's Supreme Court has canceled a seven-year prison sentence handed to a man in a high-profile trial related to the death of a 4-year-old girl during deadly unrest in Kazakhstan in January 2022.
The Supreme Court's officials told RFE/RL on June 6 that the case was sent to a court of appeals for assessment, adding that the decision was made at a hearing held behind closed doors.
The man who was sentenced in the case, Arman Zhuman, a member of the military, had been initially acquitted of a charge of abuse of power in November, but amid public outcry he was retried and on March 28 sentenced to seven years in prison.
Aikorkem Meldekhan, 4, was shot dead in the Central Asian nation's largest city, Almaty, by what the court concluded was military personnel, when she and other members of her family were in a car on their way to a grocery store on January 7, 2022.
The vehicle was sprayed with at least 20 bullets, also wounding Aikorkem's 15-year-old sister.
Zhuman's lawyer, Oksana Musokhranova, told RFE/RL that her client's defense team is working on his full acquittal.
Aikorkem's father, Aidos Meldekhan, condemned the Supreme Court's ruling, questioning the hearing's being held behind closed doors.
"Our stance has not changed. We demand the charge to be changed into murder, and all persons involved into the crime to be held responsible," Aidos Meldekhan said.
At least 238 people, including 19 law enforcement officers, are believed to have been killed during the January 2022 unrest.
At the time, President Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev gave police and military troops the controversial order to "shoot to kill without warning." He justified the move by saying "20,000 extremists trained in foreign terrorist camps" had seized Almaty airport and other buildings.
No evidence of foreign-trained terrorists was ever presented.
The order sparked an outcry, and Aikorkem's picture turned into an image symbolizing the victims of the crackdown, many of whom were killed -- some under torture -- by police, security forces and military personnel, including troops of the Russia-led Collective Security Treaty Organization, whom Toqaev invited into the country "to restore law and order."