The trial of opposition activist Amangeldy Dzhakhin will be held behind closed doors.
On 12 May, the first hearing in the case of Amangeldy Dzhakhin, one of the leaders of the unregistered party “Alga, Kazakhstan!” (“Forward, Kazakhstan!”), was held before the criminal court of the Akmola region. The hearing was brief because Judge Berikbol Sapargaliyev, after granting the prosecutor’s request for closed-door proceedings, scheduled the next hearing for 19 May at 10 a.m. and ordered a recess in the proceedings. Indeed, after the composition of the court was announced, the prosecutor requested that the case be transferred to a closed regime despite the protests of the defendant and his lawyers. The reason given was the need to “guarantee the safety of the participants in the proceedings and prevent the disclosure of information that could harm him.”
Amid cries of indignation in the courtroom, Jahin’s voice proclaiming his innocence grew louder. He is officially being prosecuted under Part 2 of Article 405 (“participation in extremist activities”) and Part 1 of Article 258 (“financing extremist activities”) of the Criminal Code of Kazakhstan. What the authorities consider extremist activity is claimed by the defendant to be merely “the expression of a civic position,” as he stated during his preliminary hearing held before the Shortandy District Court of the Akmola region on 20 March.
This is not the first time Dzhakhin has faced prosecution: he had previously been arrested for 20 days for “violating the rules governing the holding of peaceful assemblies.” On 18 November 2025, he was detained after searches were carried out at his home in Kokshetau and at his son’s residence.
These charges are far from marginal in Kazakhstan. Marat Zhylanbayev, a marathon runner and former leader of the unofficial party — unofficial because it had been denied registration 26 times — was sentenced to seven years in prison in 2023 on the same charges. His trial was also held behind closed doors. It was after Zhylanbayev’s arrest that Amangeldy Jahin took over leadership of the movement by becoming chairman of the party’s organizing committee. This harassment merely reproduces an already familiar pattern: Aidar Syzdykov, another initiator of the party, was sentenced in September 2024 to five years in a medium-security prison facility. Numerous procedural irregularities had also been reported in his case.
This is not the only unofficial party subjected to such treatment. The unregistered Atajurt party, which seeks to defend ethnic Kazakh minorities in China, has also seen around a dozen of its activists brought before the courts. The UN Human Rights Committee had already ruled on arbitrary detention in an opinion issued in 2020 concerning the case of Atajurt founder Serikzhan Bilash.
