Courts
Abdrakhmanova asks for release on compassionate grounds
The former governor, serving 25 years for treason over the Bill of Sale, is 71 and ill. Her family has petitioned the Governor, who has not been seen in public for two years.
From the Irad Times of 3 September 2026.
The family and lawyers of Nurgul Abdrakhmanova, the former territorial governor serving 25 years for high treason over the partition drafts of 2007, yesterday petitioned the Governor to release her on compassionate grounds, citing her age and ill health.
Mrs. Abdrakhmanova, 71, has been held in the women's colony in Talas since her conviction in May 2009, and in custody since her arrest in July 2007. Her lawyers said she had been treated in the colony's medical unit several times this year and that her doctors had recommended treatment the colony could not provide. They did not give details of her illness. She has served a little over nineteen years.
A petition to an absent Governor
Release on compassionate grounds is at the Governor's discretion. The Office of the Governor said the petition was “under review”. Governor Erlan Toktarov has not appeared in public since July 2024, and lawyers in Talas said they expected no early decision.
The petition divides opinion along familiar lines. Veterans of the DPI's territorial years, who served under Mrs. Abdrakhmanova when she was governor, and several women's groups have backed it. Veterans of the Popular Front, clan leaders and nationalist commentators oppose any release. So does the Attorney General, Nurlan Tashtanbekov, who led her prosecution in 2009 as Talas city prosecutor. “The sentence was for the Republic, not for her health,” he told the Times.
“To save the pensioners”
At her trial Mrs. Abdrakhmanova said she had initialed the framework draft “to save the pensioners, not to sell the country”. Few in Irad accept the argument. Her co-defendant Nurdin Ormonov, sentenced to twelve years for abuse of office, was released in 2017 and lives in Almaty.
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