A Kyrgyz court on Friday ordered two months of pre-trial detention for a cameraman and a former employee of the independent media outlet Kloop, after both pleaded guilty to charges of complicity in inciting mass riots — accusations the outlet denies. The case is widely viewed as part of an ongoing crackdown on independent media in the country.
A lawyer for the two said he plans to appeal the decision.
“This article is considered a serious crime,” said defense attorney Nurbek Sydykov, referring to the section of the criminal code concerning calls for mass unrest. “We still hope this is a mistake and that they will be acquitted,” he added.
Over the past three days, eight current and former Kloop employees have been detained and interrogated by the State Committee for National Security (GKNB). Authorities also raided Kloop’s offices, seizing documents and electronic equipment.
Kloop, Kyrgyzstan’s leading investigative journalism outlet and a partner of the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), has long reported on corruption and organized crime in Central Asia. In February 2024, a state court ordered the outlet's liquidation, citing its lack of a journalism license and alleging that its reporting had "upset" the population. Despite the ruling, Kloop continued to operate under a different legal entity.
Just an hour before Friday’s court decision that was closed to the public, the GKNB issued its first official statement since the arrests began, claiming it had “stopped destructive activities of representatives” of Kloop Media.
“Despite the liquidation and ban on activities, representatives of the former Kloop Media continued information activities, publishing negative material containing distorted information about state and municipal bodies of the Kyrgyz Republic,” the GKNB press release stated. “This illegal work aimed to provoke public discontent and manipulate public opinion in order to organize mass riots.”
The statement accused Kloop of violating the court ban by continuing to publish journalistic content, and of misleading the public “in a hypocritical manner.”
The press release was accompanied by a video showing GKNB agents raiding Kloop’s office and current and former employees stating they would stop working for the outlet and apologizing to the Kyrgyz people for allegedly spreading false information.
Kloop founder Rinat Tukhvatshin insists that the outlet operated entirely legally through a separate legal entity, which, until now, had faced no complaints from state institutions.
“I believe that the State Committee for National Security will be able to verify the legality of this entity’s operations by thoroughly reviewing the extensive tax documentation they, in my opinion, unlawfully seized yesterday,” he said.
Authorities have also linked the detentions to the reporters’ alleged cooperation with investigative journalist Bolot Temirov, the exiled head of Temirov Live, another media outlet that was shut down by the state. Temirov, who was stripped of his Kyrgyz citizenship, had collaborated with Kloop on several investigative stories in recent months.
“In order to discredit government bodies, disinformation articles and social media posts were regularly prepared and passed on to the organizers of the former Kloop Media Foundation, who, together with B. Temirov — founder of the Temirov Live YouTube channel — edited and published them,” the GKNB said.
A day earlier, the head of the Kyrgyz president’s press service, Daiyrbek Orunbekov, said the detained journalists were questioned for allegedly assisting Temirov. He claimed on Facebook that Temirov had paid the journalists to carry out “false investigations,” and that they had admitted to following his “illegal instructions” before renouncing further cooperation. Orunbekov also alleged that they confessed to “spreading false information and writing hit pieces against the state.”
Both Temirov and Kloop founder Rinat Tukhvatshin strongly denied the claims, calling them false.
The arrests began early Wednesday. So far, eight current and former Kloop employees have been interrogated. Two have been jailed, five were released and classified as witnesses, and one individual — brought in for questioning Friday afternoon — remains in custody at the GKNB building.
