Moscow – Five members of an elite unit within Kazakhstan’s national-security service, the KNB, have been arrested in connection with the killing of a leading opposition figure last week.
Altynbek Sarsenbayev, who had accused President Nursultan Nazarbayev of quashing dissent and moving the country toward authoritarianism, was found dead along with his bodyguard and driver outside the Kazakh city of Almaty. All three had been bound and shot in the back.
“Five servicemen from KNB’s Arystan forces have been arrested in connection to … the murder,” said a statement issued by the National Security Committee, the successor to Kazakhstan’s Soviet-era KGB. The KNB “is working to establish all real participants of the murder and to trace all ‘werewolves in epaulettes’ in its ranks.”
The reference to werewolves comes from a Russian expression describing corrupt police and security officials.
The five suspects were members of a group known as the Arystan, or Tiger, that conducted counterterrorism operations. The opposition in Kazakhstan had said the killing was politically motivated and ordered by senior government officials, an allegation denied by the government.
Another opposition leader, Zamanbek Nurkadilov, a former mayor of Almaty, was found dead in his home Nov. 12 with three gunshot wounds. Police said he committed suicide.
Sarsenbayev, a former Cabinet minister and ambassador to Russia under Nazarbayev, broke with the president in 2003 and supported an opposition candidate in December’s presidential elections. Nazarbayev, who has ruled the country since 1989, was returned to power with 91 percent of the vote after balloting that was condemned as flawed.
