MOSCOW — A military court in a remote city in eastern Kazakhstan sentenced a 20-year-old border guard to life in prison on Tuesday over the killings of 15 people, in a case that has drawn widespread skepticism of the authorities in the former Soviet state.
In May, 14 soldiers and a gamekeeper were killed in Arkankergen, in a mountain range on the Chinese border, and the soldiers’ outpost was burned. A few days later, the surviving young guard, Vladislav Chelakh, was found hiding nearby. Investigators said he confessed; prosecutors said he had been hazed.
However, the young man eventually said that investigators had threatened to torture him if he did not confess, and that smugglers had carried out the killings.
At first, the case reverberated through the Kazakh border guard service, forcing the resignation of its director and heaping attention on hazing and desertions at the far-flung outposts along Kazakhstan’s borders.
But while some Kazakhs called for harsh justice against Mr. Chelakh, many others doubted not only the authenticity of the confession but also other evidence provided by investigators and the security services.
An anchor for a national television station resigned rather than announce that investigators had found Mr. Chelakh and that he had confessed, saying that was “nonsense” and refusing to “lie on the air” about the case.
Proceedings in the case, which began last month, have progressed unevenly. Defense lawyers accused the Kazakh authorities of covering up the discovery of additional bodies near the outpost, but they then failed to provide evidence. At one point, Mr. Chelakh ripped a piece of plastic off a bench in the courtroom and tried to slit his wrists with it.
On Tuesday, as the trial concluded, Mr. Chelakh had to be physically restrained by two bailiffs. He tried to bite one of them, called them “beasts,” refused to make a closing statement and asked to be taken from the courtroom.
Mr. Chelakh’s mother said that she would press for an appeal.
“They should not believe that we have lost hope,” she said, according to the news service RIA Novosti. “I know that my son is innocent.”
Kazakh Border Guard Sentenced in 15 Killings
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Kazakh Border Guard Sentenced in 15 Killings
