ASTANA -- The Kazakh Interior Ministry says it has identified four accomplices who aided a person who allegedly coordinated a recent series of attacks on independent journalists.
The ministry said on March 2 that "a foreign national identified as O. Tokarev," who had been detained in the Central Asian nation's largest city, Almaty, several days earlier, confessed to coordinating the attacks and "agreed to assist" in the investigation by naming four of his accomplices.
The accomplices were identified as K. Litvinov, S. Shapovalov, B. Demchenko and Ya. Malyshok. No further details were given.
Tokarev was detained after police and security officers found materials in his home suggesting that he coordinated the attacks against several noted journalists since September.
Kazakh police said last week they had detained 18 suspects accused of attacking six journalists and bloggers, as well as one associated individual, in a spate of incidents since September.
It still remains unclear who ordered the attacks.
Makhambetova’s statement comes five days after the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) urged Kazakh authorities to "thoroughly investigate" the series of attacks on independent journalists.
Last week, a masked man physically assaulted investigative journalist Daniyar Moldabekov while shouting, "Don't stick your nose where it doesn't belong!"
On February 20, another Almaty-based journalist and vlogger, Vadim Boreiko, said his cameraman Roman Yegorov's two cars were burned in an arson attack.
Also in February, the chief editor of the Ulysmedia.kz news website in Almaty, Samal Ibraeva, received a box from unknown people that contained a hunk of meat and pictures of her children, a parcel she called a fresh attempt "to intimidate" her and her staff.
International human rights watchdogs and the embassies of several Western nations also have urged Kazakh authorities to investigate the attacks.
