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I No Longer Believe Justice Will Prevail

After being shot during Kazakhstan’s Bloody January and then tortured in custody, Sayat Adilbekuly has spent four years seeking accountability, only to find the state denying wrongdoing and justice receding further from view.

«Хочу эмигрировать». Что изменилось в жизни Саята Адильбекулы, пережившего пытки в дни Кантара

Azattyq Asia · By Азаттык Азия · 14 January 2026 · read the original in Russian →

Алматинец Саят Адильбекулы получил огнестрельное ранение в дни Кровавого января 2022 года. Из больницы его с применением силы вывезли в следственный изолятор, не дав долечиться. Оказавшись на свободе после вмешательства адвокатов, он рассказал о жестоких пытках под стражей. Судился с государством, пытаясь привлечь к ответственности виновных в пытках и добиться компенсации за безосновательное уголовное преследование. Азаттык Азия поговорил с Саятом о том, чем закончились суды и как изменилась его жизнь за минувшие четыре года.

Almaty resident Sayat Adilbekuly suffered a gunshot wound during the days of Bloody January in 2022. He was forcibly taken from the hospital to a pretrial detention center before he had been allowed to complete his treatment. Once freed after lawyers intervened, he spoke of brutal torture in custody. He took the state to court, trying to hold those responsible for the torture to account and to obtain compensation for baseless criminal prosecution. Azattyq Asia spoke with Sayat about how the court cases ended and how his life has changed over the past four years.

«Государство ничего не признало. Я прошел все инстанции, подал в ООН. Теперь мое дело рассматривается там: и пытки, и незаконное преследование, и неправомерное давление, когда меня необоснованно вызывали в полицию», — рассказывает Саят Адильбекулы.

"The state has admitted nothing. I went through every court instance and filed with the UN. Now my case is being considered there: the torture, the unlawful prosecution, and the improper pressure when I was summoned to the police without grounds," Sayat Adilbekuly says.

Qantar overturned the life of the 33-year-old Almaty resident, who had lived in his own world: family, work, daily routine. Before the January events, the young man kept away from politics, did not attend rallies, and had never had dealings with either those in power or the police. He was interested in photography and videography: filming city streets, people, and mountain landscapes.

On January 5, 2022, Sayat left home in search of a pharmacy to buy medicine for his one-year-old daughter, who was lying at home with a high fever. The city was under an information blockade: the internet had been cut off, and communications were unstable. The nearby pharmacies were closed. Sayat set out to find others. On the way, he encountered an aggressive crowd which, according to the Almaty resident, forced him by threats to join it and go from the residential district into the city center, where the situation was already tense. On Republic Square, a many-thousand-strong antigovernment protest spilled over into unrest and looting.

Sayat Adilbekuly suffered a gunshot wound, fled the epicenter of the events, and made his way home by catching rides. His relatives called an ambulance, and he was hospitalized in City Hospital No. 7. The bullet had struck his kidney. Doctors performed emergency surgery, managing to save the organ, and transferred the patient to intensive care.

On January 8, security forces burst into the hospital and took away all the patients with gunshot wounds, including Sayat.

His mother, wife, and brother did not know where to look for Sayat. Contact with him had been cut off. He was listed on an unofficial register of the missing kept by volunteers.

"Sayat Adilbekuly, 31, went out to a pharmacy on January 5, was wounded, and was hospitalized in City Hospital No. 7. On January 8, he was taken from the hospital by law enforcement agencies," the volunteers' records stated.

Several days later, after lawyers who had struggled to gain access to the pretrial detention center intervened, the public learned that the wounded had been tortured behind bars. According to Sayat, masked men beat confessions out of him: to "raping nurses," "beheading a cadet," and "seizing government buildings."

On January 14, an investigating court ordered Sayat held in custody for two months as a suspect in "participation in mass unrest." On January 25, he was released on a written pledge not to leave the area.

"I DO NOT KNOW A SINGLE PERSON WHOSE CASE MADE IT TO COURT." TORTURE WITHOUT PUNISHMENT

Once free, Adilbekuly told journalists about the extreme abuse in the detention facility. According to him, everyone was beaten. One of his cellmates was taken away for interrogation, where boiling water was poured over him; when he was brought back and tried to remove his clothes, his skin came off with the fabric.

Sayat himself spent two weeks with a catheter leading to his kidney, one that was supposed to be changed several times a day. Later the catheter was torn out, the site was smeared with iodine, and he was given painkillers; that was the entirety of the "treatment."

Adilbekuly was one of the few people who openly stated that torture had been used in the pretrial detention center and demanded that the guilty be punished. He filed a complaint, on the basis of which a criminal case was opened. The investigation barely moved, as with the statements submitted by others who had survived abuse in the detention facility. Later the Almaty resident learned that the torture case had been closed "for lack of evidence."

"Although there was evidence. My cellmates confirmed it. They saw some of the torture; they were present. We requested the camera recordings, but we were told that the cameras were not working at the time. The hospital camera footage from when we were taken away was obtained, but for some reason it was not added to the case file. Although it shows SOBR taking me away. As for the KNB officers, there were no face-to-face confrontations. They said the KNB had refused to provide photographs for the identification of its officers. In the end, they gave photographs only of the detention center staff. I identified the detention center officers who, despite my wound, forced me to whitewash and repair the premises. But regarding them I was told that they had not directly participated in the torture and would not be charged. It also did not work out with the officers of [the police special forces unit] Arlan, because they said they had been wearing masks. Of those who were with me in SI-18, I do not know a single person whose [torture complaint] case made it to court," Adilbekuly notes.

In August 2022, the charges against Adilbekuly of involvement in the unrest were dropped, thereby acknowledging that the criminal prosecution had been baseless.

"For the unlawful criminal prosecution, I was compensated for damages in the amount of 800,000 tenge," Sayat says. "Seven hundred thousand for moral harm and 100,000 for the lawyer, although the lawyer cost me 500,000. I have all the receipts. But the judge said I had paid the lawyer too much."

Adilbekuly stresses that the court assessed the damage at 700,000 tenge for 14 days spent in the pretrial detention center, but, as he sees it, failed to take into account how hard those two weeks were for him. "We were brutally beaten and tortured. But the judge's answer was: 'We have no criteria by which to assess this,'" he laments.

The international organization International Partnership for Human Rights, in a report prepared jointly with Kazakhstani human rights defenders titled "We Don't Even Cry Anymore: Torture, Ill-Treatment and Impunity in Kazakhstan in Connection with the Bloody January Events," notes that "the Kazakhstani authorities have failed to conduct an impartial and effective investigation into allegations of torture and ill-treatment by officials." As a consequence, the use of torture remains unpunished in the country. Human rights defenders documented methods including burning with a hot iron, rape by police officers, and burns inflicted with cigarettes and a lighter.

"I NO LONGER BELIEVE JUSTICE WILL PREVAIL"

Sayat says the torture he endured still affects his health.

"My memory is gradually recovering after the beating. But because I did not complete treatment for the kidney rupture and my twelfth rib was broken, my immunity declined. I remember that in the pretrial detention center they asked who had pain where. I pointed to my kidney, and that was exactly where they hit me. In other words, they struck the places where people were wounded. Because of that, there were complications later. I also have documentary confirmation that I have atrophy of the optic nerve in my left eye. It had been damaged before, but afterward it became even worse. I submitted all these certificates when I filed complaints about the consequences of the torture and demanded compensation for moral harm, but they were not even considered," Sayat says.

He says that after the criminal cases were closed, he faced pressure. According to the Almaty resident, he was summoned to the police more than once over posts he published about Qantar.

"Several times I was summoned to the district police department, supposedly in connection with other cases. Ahead of December 16 [in 2024], I was summoned and told that a statement had been filed against me alleging that my phone supposedly contained some extremist applications, messages. They checked my phone and let me go. Another time, they forced me to delete my Facebook post. And in the spring [of 2025], when I was on my way to an event held by a nongovernmental organization, unknown people stopped me in the street; they did not introduce themselves, but made it clear they were from the security structures, hit me a couple of times, took me to some basement, and said: 'Stop stirring up the Qantar issue!'" he says.

Asked whether he filed a complaint about abduction, unlawful detention, and threats, or initiated a review of surveillance camera footage, Adilbekuly answers no. He believes "there will be no point." Nor does he hold out hope that he will be able to secure punishment for those who tortured him.

"I no longer believe justice will prevail. The only hope is that when the government changes, another government will come in, one that will be interested in bringing all the dark deeds of the previous authorities to light," he says with conviction.

Four years after the bloody events that claimed at least 238 lives, Sayat Adilbekuly says he does not count on justice in his homeland. In 2022, in the wake of Qantar, speaking about Kazakhstan's future, he said he did not want to leave the country and hoped that future generations would live in a free state. Now he is less optimistic. There are reasons for that, the Almaty resident notes.

"People in civilian clothes came to my home. I was forced to install a camera at home. They frightened my mother. All those recordings exist. Because of the persecution, my brother was forced to leave the country. I am still here for now, but I am thinking [about emigration]. I got divorced. For now I am resolving the issue with my child (Sayat has a five-year-old daughter. - Ed.). And, if it works out, I want to emigrate too," he says.