Thursday, October 25, 2012

BISHKEK — Kyrgyz Deputy Interior Minister Melis Turganbaev tells RFE/RL that a new investigation has been launched into the high-profile murder of an independent ethnic Uzbek journalist.

Turganbaev did not elaborate, only saying that an investigation was under way.

Alisher Saipov was shot dead in the center of the southern city of Osh on October 24, 2007.

In 2010, the Osh City Court found a local citizen, Abdulgafar Rasulov, guilty of Saipov’s murder and sentenced him to 20 years in prison.

Saipov’s father, Avas Saipov, protested the sentence, saying that the real killers and those who plotted the murder were not punished.

Alisher Saipov wrote about Islamic groups and opposition politics in the region and reported on the 2005 massacre of protesters in the Uzbek city of Andijon.