Kazakh opposition leader found shot dead: police

ALMATY (Reuters) – A Kazakh former minister and leading
member of the Central Asian state’s political opposition was
found shot dead on Monday, police said.

The body of Altynbek Sarsenbaiuly, a 43-year-old critic of
President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s government, was found along
with two other corpses lying beside a country road near Almaty,
the country’s biggest city.

All three men had gunshot wounds, police said in a
statement on their official Web site www.police.kz.

“The Interior Minister has taken the investigation under
his personal control,” the statement said. It gave no other
details.

Earlier on Monday, the Kazakhstan Today news agency quoted
unnamed sources as saying Sarsenbaiuly had been hunting near
Almaty.

Sarsenbaiuly briefly held a ministerial post in 2004 but
resigned after three months to protest against a September
parliamentary election that he said was rigged by the
president’s supporters.

Before joining the opposition he had been an ambassador to
Russia and held several ministerial posts.

He was the second prominent Kazakh opposition figure to die
in mysterious circumstances in recent months.

Zamanbek Nurkadilov, a former mayor of Almaty and close
ally of Nazarbayev who switched to the opposition in 2004, was
found dead in November with three gunshot wounds to the chest
and head.

Police have said they suspect Nurkadilov committed suicide,
but the opposition said he was murdered and said they could not
rule out a political motive.