Overview

• On September 17, a court convicted former Kloop cameramen Joomart Duulatov and Aleksandr Aleksandrov of making public calls for mass unrest and imposed five-year prison terms.
• Prosecutors linked the case to five critical videos on the exiled Temirov Live channel, while founder Bolot Temirov says he created the content independently and had no cooperation with the accused.
• The pair were detained on May 28 during a State Committee on National Security sweep that involved searches without warrants, confiscation of equipment, and interrogations without access to lawyers.
• Human Rights Watch reports the trial lacked credible technical evidence, notes that court experts found no calls for unrest in the videos, and says the defendants retracted pressured confessions on September 9.
• Two Kloop accountants received three years of probation, Kloop’s lawyers plan to appeal, and CPJ and HRW condemned the verdicts as part of a pattern of pressure on independent media, with Kloop already blocked and ordered shut down.