“Special services, Russophobe and gay”: Taichibekov told how he was thrown behind bars
How, being innocent, you can get the longest possible sentence in Kazakhstan. Who came up with the ideology of Kazakhstan, according to which the Russians are to blame for everything?
Ermek Taychibekov , a Russophile and activist convicted in Kazakhstan for his views on blatantly fabricated charges, spoke to PolitNavigator about this and much more from prison .
You previously stated that you believe Senator Mukhtar Abraruly Kul-Muhammed may be behind the persecution against you. Now, as far as I understand, this assumption has grown into a certainty?
– Mukhtar Abraruly Kul-Mukhammed is, in fact, not an ordinary senator. He is the chairman of the Committee on Defense, Security and International Relations of the highest legislative body of the Republic of Kazakhstan. One of the favorites and favorites of Elbasy Nazarbayev Nursultan Abishevich. In fact, Nazarbayev stuck him into the Senate looking after Kazakhstan on issues of security and international relations. Therefore, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the National Security Committee, the prosecutor's office, the courts, and so on are subordinate to him. Therefore, it was absolutely illegal and easy to fabricate a criminal case against me.
What is Kul-Muhammad's interest here?
– His younger brother Muratgali Abraruly Aketay is the chairman of the Judicial Collegium for Criminal Cases of the Pavlodar Regional Court. I don’t know who filmed him while he was sucking someone’s erect penis. But, I repeat once again, I myself have not seen this video, but in the materials of the criminal case I saw photographs of screenshots from this video, and during the trial on December 6 and 8, 2021, I compared them with the original, and I want to say that the eyes, forehead , ears, mouth - everything matches! Mirror! It was during the trial that I realized that this was him! And the fact that he doesn’t have a scar on his stomach now, he could have removed it with a laser at any plastic surgery for a million tenge. But the face, I repeat, absolutely matches!
But I do not publicly claim that it is him. Yes, I personally think it's him. One hundred percent. I have no doubts. It’s no coincidence that I told him, let’s take a lie detector test, I’ll ask you just one question: are you in the video? And you can ask me at least a hundred different questions: did I film this video, did I publish this video, did I give anyone instructions to publish it? And I am ready to answer that I have never seen this video before in my life.
We return to Kul-Mukhammed Mukhtar. This is a native of China. His ancestors emigrated to China 100–200 years ago. And so he returned. It was he who came up with the idea to get under Nazarbayev’s skin, that all Kazakhs from Mongolia and China should be returned to Kazakhstan.
He came up with an ideology according to which only Russia, the Russians, are to blame for all the troubles of the Kazakhs - past, present and future. His own younger sister heads a corporation that publishes history textbooks for schoolchildren of the Republic of Kazakhstan, in which it is always written that the Russians are colonialists, occupiers, destroyed the Kazakhs, etc. and so on.
That is, if you read modern Kazakh history textbooks, you can conclude that only the Russians, Russia, and the Kremlin are to blame for all the troubles of the Kazakhs.
Previously, Mukhtar Kul-Mukhammed headed the presidential administration, he was the Minister of Culture, he is the main executioner of the Russian World in Kazakhstan, and today he heads the Committee, and all the country's security forces report to him. At the same time, he is not Tokayev’s man, he is Nazarbayev’s protege, and in light of recent events, since Nazarbayev’s family has stepped aside, I think that the situation can be influenced from Russia in a conversation with Tokayev, making it clear that this person needs to be gotten rid of. Only after this can the format of relations between Russia and Kazakhstan be restructured.
That is, his hatred of you, as a Russophile, is not only familial, but also ideological in nature?
– If we consider my criminal case itself, then, I repeat, in October 2019, someone filmed this chairman of the Judicial Collegium for Criminal Cases of the Pavlodar Regional Court, the younger brother of this Mukhtar Kul-Mukhammed, Murat Aketai. And someone published this video in all WhatsApp groups. This, of course, was done by influential people with their own information resources, most likely related to the special services. Well, when Murat Aketay turned to the police of the Pavlodar region, its head at that time was the cousin of Karim Masimov (chairman of the National Security Committee), Nurlan Masimov.
And he, apparently, asked his brother who could have done all this? And Karim Masimov obviously replied: “This was done by Ermek Kenesovich Taichibekov.” And that’s it - an operational investigation team breaks into my place, turns over my entire apartment, seizes three laptops, seven telephones, studies everything thoroughly and does not find any traces, no evidence that I was involved in this at all.
In theory, after this the criminal case against me should have been closed automatically, but that was not the case. Mukhtar Kul-Mukhammed, apparently, involves the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the National Security Committee, the prosecutor's office, and the courts. And they begin to fabricate a criminal case for me based on the Dungan events [pogroms of the Dungans by the Kazakhs].
In February 2020, the head of the Department for Combating Extremism and Terrorism of the city of Almaty, Erkin Ilyasovich Inkarov, called me and said: “I know, Taichiekov, you are absolutely innocent and have served four years for nothing, but they put pressure on me every day. They order from Astana, they say: “Prison Taichibekov in any way.” But I won’t do it.” And when he was transferred to the position of head of the Criminal Police Department, replacing him with another person - Kasimzhan Maulen, only then was I arrested. And this Kasimzhan Maulen began to say to my face: “You, Taychibekov, should not be put in prison, but publicly shot.” That's what he said on September 23, 2020.
Shoot for what? For the position that we need to be friends with Russia and stop squeezing out Russians? For the opinion that the pogrom of the Dungans is a crime?
– What is inciting hatred - it doesn’t matter whether it’s religious or ethnic, but so that there is a criminal format? These are necessarily calls for violent action. In extreme cases, justification for violent actions. Neither before my first term, nor before my second, I never in my interviews called for the destruction of any nation, the same Kazakh, to which I belong, I did not call for the Kazakhs to be made slaves, I never justified violent actions, I just talked about that Russians are wonderful people, Dungans are good people, why make enmity between peoples?
That is, I was imprisoned for seven years for pacifism! This is simply absurd and nonsense!
Therefore, when the criminal case in June 2021 was, in fact, dropped in court, the judge also reviewed the Moscow examination [prepared by Russian lawyers] and came to the conclusion that there was no incitement, at this moment, unexpectedly, two years after the start of the process, a Pavlodar region police investigator Nurgaliev Talgat Kairullaevich, and begins to tell me: “Admit guilt that you are involved in this video with Murat Aketai! Repent publicly, and then you will be acquitted in the main case of inciting ethnic hatred. You will only get two years of restriction of freedom.” I replied: “What are you talking about?!” How can it be?!".
At that time, I didn’t even understand that these two criminal cases were interconnected. And that Mukhtar Kul-Mukhammed is behind these criminal cases. I then told the investigator this:
“I thought that in two years you found the real culprits, but it turns out that all this time you were fabricating a criminal case.”
And that’s it, after that the judge who, in fact, dismissed the case, Sembaev Daniyar Kazalievich, seemed to be replaced, he began to hold court hearings every day, and he himself rejected the same petitions that he had previously granted. And he quickly gave me the maximum sentence. Immediately after this, this case appears - regarding Murat Aketai, and they give me another sentence. There is obviously revenge going on here, and in violation of the criminal procedure code, the Constitution, and I am convinced that Mukhtar Kul-Mukhamed is behind all this.
Do you feel like he himself believes in your involvement in distributing a gay video with his younger brother? Or is this revenge purely for ideological reasons?
– The issue here is not some kind of personal enmity. Remember the famous expression: “Personnel decides everything?” Yes, personnel decides absolutely everything in our lives. We can say, yes, the Kazakhs are such and such, a Russophobic and anti-Russian policy is being pursued in Kazakhstan, but these are generalized and incompetent statements. But when we study the situation carefully, we see that not all Kazakhs are against Russia, but the reason is Mukhtar Kul-Mukhamed. Or in MP Aidos Sarym, who previously said:
“I dream that no one in Kazakhstan speaks Russian,” “The meaning of my life is to devote it to the fight against the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union, the Russian Federation.”
And now he sits as a deputy of the Mazhilis (parliament of Kazakhstan).
Or the same Mukhtar Taizhan, who, unlike me, justified violent actions, said that it was right to destroy the Dungans. Now he is a member of the National Council of Public Trust under the President of Kazakhstan. And behind all this is Mukhtar Kul-Mukhamed - the most important gray cardinal. This man is the ideologist of Russophobia in Kazakhstan. And he is very close to Nazarbayev. And I think, due to changes in the country, he should be moved away from the political establishment of Kazakhstan.
English version :: Read in English "Security Services, a Russophobe, and a Gay": Taychibekov Reveals How He Was Thrown Behind Bars