ALMATY, Kazakhstan -- Before the interview, there was the head massage.
Arstan Abdyldaev, aka Arstan Alai, then a candidate in the 2017 presidential election, insisted on it.
Already famous for predicting the disappearance of winter and for hailing Russian President Vladimir Putin's abilities as a "complex biorobot," the businessman-turned-clairvoyant wanted to know if I could feel the energy of the universe flowing through him.
I couldn't, but he wasn't offended.
Some people could feel the connection immediately, he explained to me, smiling sympathetically. For others, it might take "years."
After the massage, he sat down with me and a colleague to discuss his and Kyrgyzstan's respective roles in saving humanity as he rolled out a second presidential bid.
The election would end with him receiving just over 0.1 percent of the vote, less than the 0.5 percent that he scooped in 2011. It was in that year that he went viral with the phrase "zima ne budet" (there will be no winter) during a press conference in which he claimed to be in possession of "the code to the future."
There was a third unsuccessful presidential bid, in the 2021 election won by current President Sadyr Japarov. But there won't be a fourth.
On December 15, after relatives raised the alarm when he failed to come home, Kyrgyzstan's State Committee for National Security (UKMK) confirmed that Abdyldaev had been arrested on charges of inciting religious enmity.
Then, on January 5, according to the state prison service, he was found hanged in the canteen of a special medical and correctional institution outside Bishkek that he had been transferred to without consultation with his lawyer after experiencing what the prison service called "an unspecified personality disorder and hallucinations."
Abdyldaev is one of several public figures who have died under investigation during Japarov's three years in power -- a period that has seen the country join its authoritarian regional neighbors in the "unfree" category of international democracy indexes.
But his tragic end has a symbolic feel.
Once the only country in Central Asia where an independent candidate as mercurial and quirky as Abdyldaev could throw his or her hat into the presidential ring, Kyrgyzstan is now a country where the people who go to prison cannot be sure if they will leave it alive.
'Who Strung You Up?'
Officially, the circumstances of Abdyldaev's death are being raked over by the prosecutor-general and a commission set up by the Justice Ministry.
In comments that might foreshadow the outcome of those probes, Justice Minister Ayaz Baetov wrote in a January 5 Facebook post that surveillance footage given to the ministry by the state prison service showed "clear signs of suicidal behavior" on the prisoner's part. He did not provide any details.
Neither of Abdyldaev's children believe it was possible that he could have taken his life, however.
At his 55-year-old father's funeral on January 7, Toro Abdyldaev spoke through tears as he listed his father's long history of supporting charitable causes and offering interest-free loans to young entrepreneurs.
"If I could have one wish, I would ask [him]: 'Father, how are you? Who strung you up?'" he said during the ceremony in the village of Orok, near Bishkek, where Islamic rites were observed.
His sister, Aksana Arstanbekova, said Abdyldaev had been in "good spirits" when they last spoke and confident that he would not be spending too much more time in jail.
Both have alleged that his corpse showed bruising not concurrent with a hanging.
Another lingering question is why the authorities felt the need to arrest him in the first place.
Abdyldaev had faced prosecution before the Japarov era, in 2019, when he referred to himself as a god, having previously only portrayed himself as a prophet-type figure with visions of the world's Kyrgyz-led future.
Then, as now, the authorities opened a case into incitement of religious enmity.
Abdyldaev's supporters sprang to his defense, holding a press conference at which they called for the charges to be dropped.
"All Kyrgyz are gods," one was quoted by RFE/RL's Kyrgyz Service as saying at the time. "Our ancestors were gods. And we are also gods. So let them bring a criminal case against all of us, too!"
The charges were subsequently dropped.
But this time around, they stuck.
"He considers himself a 'new god,' a 'savior,' and considers other religions, beliefs, and views to be inferior, weak, and invalid delusions, and assesses them negatively," the UKMK said in a December 15 statement justifying the detention as well as raids on his property.
Speaking anonymously to RFE/RL's Kyrgyz Service later that week, a supporter of Abdyldaev denied these claims, as well as the UKMK's suggestions that Abdyldaev may have been intimate with some of his female adherents.
"We meet three times a week, older and younger people, both women and men. Some come specially from remote regions to listen to Arstan Alai. During his lectures he talks about a new era, a new scientific civilization. There were no conversations [against] religion. On the contrary, he says that in the new century, all religions will unite."
Abdyldaev did occasionally allow himself to venture into more political matters, however. In at least two interviews last year he called Japarov's arrival to power a "tragedy for the Kyrgyz people," foreseeing the president's eventual downfall in what would be the country's fourth revolution.
No Country For Watchdogs
Abdyldaev was one of the last people that I interviewed while living in Kyrgyzstan.
One of the first people that I interviewed there was Marat Kazakpaev, then a lecturer at the Kyrgyz-Russian Slavic University.
His phone number had been given to me by a civil society leader. "You can phone him any time of day. He loves to talk," she promised.
Sure enough, Kazakpaev was generous with his time, and a dead certain for a fast quote on election nights. So, there was naturally a lot of shock when the analyst was suddenly jailed on high-treason charges in April 2021.
UKMK chief and Japarov friend and political ally Kamchybek Tashiev told local media that the investigation into Kazakpaev's alleged espionage had predated the duo's arrival to power, which may well have been the case.
But it was under the Japarov/Tashiev watch that Kazakpaev died on June 10, 2022, in a hospital, after first falling into a coma while in jail.
The year before, Kazakpaev had complained of being intimidated by UKMK operatives -- claims Tashiev personally refuted. By April 2022, Kazakpaev's wife, Anar Kazakpaeva, told the National Center for the Prevention of Torture that her husband's health was at grave risk.
After a medical examination that confirmed a severe case of hypertension, the center recommended Kazakpaev's release from jail for planned treatment in line with Kyrgyz law -- but the UKMK ignored the advice.
Just over a week after Kazakpaev's death, the UKMK was in the spotlight again after a noted banker accused of corruption died in his jail cell. The UKMK said that Bakyt Asanbaev had committed suicide.
But Kyrgyzstan's then-ombudswoman, Atyr Abdrakhmatova, still had plenty of questions, noting that Asanbaev had been interrogated by an investigator without his lawyer present on the eve of his death. "Then there is the question of why he was moved to a different cell…why were there extension cords and other things that would allow for something like this to happen to a person?" Abdrakhmatova told journalists.
Subsequent government investigations into the deaths failed to find any fault with the authorities.
But pro-government lawmakers were soon finding plenty of faults with Abdrakhmatova's rigorous approach to her job. In May 2023, she was handed her marching orders by parliament, which endorsed a career prosecutor as her replacement.
January 10 will mark the anniversary of the election victory that confirmed Japarov's remarkable rise to power -- from a prison cell, no less -- following postelection unrest in 2020.
Since then, the former opposition politician has overseen constitutional changes that have greatly strengthened his office and weakened parliament. He has also cracked down on online critics and trained his sights on reshaping the country in his own image -- even changing the national flag.
Of his 16 opponents in the 2021 presidential contest, at least nine have spent time in jail during his presidency, while one has now died there.
