Uznews, Osh, 10 Apr 2009 – The Kyrgyz Drug Control Agency has announced the detention of a drug courier who carried a pistol from which well-known Kyrgyz journalist Alisher Saipov was killed in October 2007.
The spokesman for the agency, Kumar Chaldanbayev, told the BBC that a Kyrgyz citizen had been detained with 16 kg of drugs in the village of Arka in Batken Region’s Leylek District.
A Makarov pistol was seized from him, Chaldanbayev told the BBC.
Ballistic examination showed that this pistol was used to kill Saipov in October 2007, Chaldanbayev said.
The new development may shed light on the murder of Alisher Saipov, 26, the publisher of the Uzbek-language Siyosat (Politics) newspaper in Kyrgyzstan’s Osh, which despite pledges by high-ranking officials, including Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev, has never been solved.
The investigation excluded the journalist’s professional activities from the start, but focused on his alleged links to Islamic extremist groups and Uzbekistan’s opposition Erk party.
Saipov’s colleagues blamed Kyrgyz officials’ accusations against him for their lack of courage to name people who ordered the murder and executors who are on the other side of the border – in Uzbekistan.
Uznews.net’s correspondent has not been able to talk to the Kyrgyz Interior Ministry’s press service to ask them to comment on the drug agency’s statement.
Alisher Saipov, an ethnic Uzbek from Osh, was one of the strongest critics of Uzbek President Islam Karimov.
He sympathised with people who suffered from Karimov’s dictatorship and tried to influence the situation in this country, publishing the Siyosat newspaper which was mainly read by Uzbeks going to shop in Kyrgyzstan.
His family and friends say that Alisher was killed on orders from Tashkent. His father Avas Saipov has repeatedly written to Kyrgyz President Bakiyev, saying that he knows who killed his son – Uzbek President Islam Karimov. Many Kyrgyz government officials admitted this in private.
Journalists hope that the pistol discovered will help Kyrgyz investigators find the killers of Alisher Saipov and punish them.
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