Two former journalists for the investigative media outlet Kloop received five-year prison sentences on September 17 after being found guilty of participating in calls for mass disorder. The convictions mark another severe blow to press freedom amid an ongoing campaign by President Sadyr Japarov’s administration to tighten control over the flow of information in the country.

Prosecutors alleged that Joomart Duulatov, 22, and Alexander Alexandrov, 27, participated in the creation of five episodes that appeared on the YouTube channel Temirov Live, run by exiled journalist and government critic Bolot Temirov. The prosecution maintained the five episodes contained content intended to incite mass unrest.

Bishkek District Judge Cholponay Umetalieva also found two former Kloop accountants, Olesya Nesterenko, 58, and Elena Kojanova, 69, guilty on the same charges, but sentenced them to three years of probation due to their age.

The courtroom, packed with friends and relatives of the defendants, was enveloped in silence as the judge read out the verdicts. Alexandrov motioned stoically to his wife through the glass of the witness box as Duulatov wiped his eyes. Nesterenko and Kojanova appeared relieved the judge had not given them the six years of jail time the prosecutor had requested. The prosecution sought eight-year terms for Duulatov and Alexandrov.

All four defendants testified they did not help film or produce Temirov’s videos, nor had they ever spoken to him. “I saw the videos for the first time yesterday,” Kojanova said in her final appeal to the judge.

Bolot Temirov, in comments made earlier, insisted he never had any contact with the defendants.

The defendants’ lawyers indicated they would appeal the ruling. Duulatov’s attorney, Nurgazy Sydykov, said in his closing argument that the government’s case was designed to muzzle independent journalism in Kyrgyzstan.

“After we’ve gone through all this evidence, I’ve just got one impression left. That it’s as if these indictments were just to scare other Kyrgyz journalists,” Sydykov said.

Since rising to power in 2020, Japarov, along with state security services chief Kamchybek Tashiev, have acted to quash critical voices in the press. Kloop, the investigative news site for which Duulatov and Alexandrov worked, was shuttered by a court decision in February 2024. Last October, four journalists working for Temirov Live were convicted – and two jailed. Both outlets published content detailing government malfeasance.

This year, Kanyshay Mamyrkulova was sentenced to four years of probation over Facebook posts, and a court closed down April TV, a critical news outlet, allegedly for undermining state authority with “sarcasm and mimicry.”

The case against the Kloop four began in May, when the State Committee for National Security rounded up current and former employees of the outlet, which now operates in exile, and interrogated them for hours without legal representation. Duulatov, Alexandrov, Nesterenko and Kojanova ended up being criminally charged, and the two journalists were held in jail over the summer.

None of the witnesses during the four-day trial provided testimony that the defendants collaborated with Temirov, or called for mass disorder. Prosecutors did not present evidence or forensic analysis from laptops, cell phones, hard drives or financial documents seized by police that could help prove their case.

Umetalieva did not provide any reasoning for her decision from the bench but noted that all four defendants had signed confessions “to their crime” during interrogations by the State Committee for National Security.

During the trial, all four recanted those confessions. The journalists said they made the confessions under duress, adding that security forces led them to believe they would be released from jail to house arrest if they complied. “I was very afraid. It was the first time I’d been in an interrogation cell,” Duulatov testified, adding he felt ill and at one point lost consciousness. “[I signed] out of fear I would end up behind bars.”

Meanwhile, the two accountants said they believed they were confessing to having worked for Kloop, not to a criminal charge of calling for mass disorder. 

The prosecution largely stayed quiet throughout the trial. Prosecutor U. Akmatov asked Alexandrov only two questions during cross examination, and his closing argument consisted of reading the indictment. 

“He didn’t even open up one single document. You know what the reason is? Because in those documents there is not a single piece of evidence,” Sydykov, one of the defense lawyers, told the judge.

An expert-linguist for the prosecution, Taalaybek Abdykojoev, testified that a slogan (“Freedom is not given, freedom is won”) that is featured in the five Temirov Live videos named in the indictment can be interpreted as a call to mass disorder. But on cross examination, Abdykojoev admitted he saw no evidence that any of the defendants were involved in the creation of the videos. 

All the witnesses who testified at the trial stated that they had never seen or heard of the four defendants working with Temirov Live or calling for mass disorder.

Asked by a defence lawyer whether she had ever heard the defendants talk about overthrowing the government, former Kloop reporter Ayday Erkebaeva told the court she had not.

“As journalists we don’t have the right to do that. We just collect and distribute information. They were good journalists,” she said, looking to Duulatov and Alexandrov. “And that’s what they did.”

Alexander Thompson is a journalist based in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, reporting on current events across Central Asia. He previously worked for American newspapers, including the Charleston, S.C., Post and Courier and The Boston Globe.

This article first appeared on Eurasianet here.