Timur Kim

Almaty resident Timur Kim calls 25 days behind bars immersion in the underworld. He describes his experience in custody in one short and terrifying word – “hell”.

He was subjected to torture and pressure - severely beaten, electrocuted, threatened with rape with a police baton, and his wife “made a terrorist” - knocking out the necessary testimony. According to Kim, the authorities opened a case of torture, but two months later there are still no suspects.

Timur Kim, 37, lives with his wife and three young children in a small and cozy apartment near Lake Sayran in Almaty. He is engaged in the repair and assembly of computers, as well as the manufacture of furniture to order. The calm and measured life of this apolitical friendly family was interrupted in January, when armed special forces appeared on the threshold.

Lyaylim Abildaeva, the wife of Timur Kim, describes how armed men took her husband out of the house:

On the evening of January 9, Timur was cooking pasta in the kitchen, his wife was sitting in a room with children. They were about to have dinner when there was a knock on the door.

“My daughter came to the door and asked, ‘Who’s there?’ They asked me to call my dad to help pick up a neighbor’s washing machine,” recalls Lyaylim Abildaeva, Timur’s wife.

“I can hear in my footsteps that my husband is coming to the door. A click and then he yells, the kids yelling. I run up, the riot police pointed a machine gun at me. There were ten of them, seven of them with machine guns. I take the children away, I tell them: everything will be fine. They started beating my husband. Here [shows the space against the wall] one of them held the husband and beat him. They demanded my ID, a jacket, for some reason a black one. When I went for my jacket, my phone, I could feel the muzzle of a machine gun on my back.

In front of the children, the father was handcuffed and, without letting him put on his shoes, they took him away.

He returned home three and a half weeks later. The release would not have been possible without Leylim’s struggle, who was circling the rapids trying to prove that her husband had not committed a crime.

“I’M GOING TO SHOOT YOU. WE HAVE SUCH RIGHT.”

Timur talks about the torture in detail, trying not to miss the details. Shows dark dots - traces after the use of a stun gun. They, the bruises from the blows, are still there, although more than a month has passed.

The beatings that began in the apartment continued in the paddy wagon. On the way, several police officers kicked him lying on the floor of a car. They took him to a building, where they also began to beat him.

“They threw me in the hallway. Someone said I was handing out guns and immediately I was attacked by six or eight people in camouflage. I fell and defended myself. They hit me on the head, on the body.

They didn’t ask anything. This went on for about 10-15 minutes. Then they took me to the office and told me to sit on the floor. They didn’t give a chair. I asked for water. They didn’t give it to me. My throat was dry. They started asking. I told them how it was,” says Timur.

On the afternoon of January 5, when mass protests in Almaty turned into pogroms – a mob seized the buildings of the akimat and the president’s residences, which were then set on fire – Timur Kim was at home. In the evening, his brother-in-law Yermukhamed came to him and offered to go to the square.

“I initially declined. Then he offered again - just to observe, suddenly someone would need help. I agreed. Off we went. They drove out in my car. There were few cars in the city - and all without numbers. I didn’t shoot the numbers. We arrived at the square from the side of [Street] Zheltoksan. We got out of the car and watched. The building of the akimat was on fire, near the RBK Bank looted. I saw someone walking with a sledgehammer. We stood near the square for 15 minutes and then drove along Satpayev in the direction of the house, “Timur tells the correspondent.

“Innocent people were shot.” What happened on January 6 in Almaty Square.

While driving home, according to Timur, they saw burning cars, the smashed building of the police department of the Almaly district. According to Kim, he returned home and did not go out again that day. The police didn’t believe it. They said he looked like a man who handed out guns to protesters.

“One of the employees in the office took a helmet and started hitting me with the back side. “Are you going to tell the truth?” I say, “It’s all true.” Then he pulled out a pistol from his holster and said, “I’m going to shoot you now. We have the right to do so.” I say, “Don’t, I have four children, a wife. I’m not that kind of person. You must have confused someone.” He brought the gun to his temple and pulled the trigger. “I feel like it clicked. I don’t know if he knew there was no ammo or if I was lucky. Then another came in and kicked me with all his strength in the side of my stomach, began to interrogate me,” says Timur.

A stun gun was used. They hit him on the head, on the body. Then they put him on his knees and put a plastic bag over his head. They removed the bag when he began to suffocate. Let him catch his breath a bit and put it back on. They ordered him to stretch his arms forward and beat them with water bottles. Then they took off his shoes and beat him on the feet with batons.

“They said to me, ‘Let’s make it so that your wife handed out weapons in the square.’ We will make terrorists out of your wife and out of you. It will be necessary, ten witnesses will be found to testify against you, ” continues Timur Kim, “They gave me a paper to sign. I wanted to read it, but they didn’t let me. They opened the last pages right away, and I just signed there. I didn’t see what they wrote there. As I signed the papers, two men came for me and led me out of the office. We went up the stairs somewhere. I was led face down. I was in many offices, no one introduced themselves. I was taken to another building, taken to an office, offered food and water. I drank a bottle of 0.5 [liters] in a gulp. I was told that I would be with them until the morning, fastened to the battery, the other hand was freed. They laid down at the end of the office, and I sat by the battery until morning.”

FIRST DATE IN 22 DAYS

Laylim could not find a place for herself during this time. She asked Hermukhamed’s younger brother, a former policeman, to find out where Timur had been taken. The next day, the family learned that he was being held at the police department, but no one was allowed to go there, there were special forces soldiers standing around. Then Laylim received a call from an unknown number. It was Timur.

“I was delighted. He asked to take the children to the neighbors’ house. I thought he would be back soon and didn’t want the kids to see him in that state. I was told that he would be held for 48 hours and released home after an interrogation. He was handcuffed. It was a search. My husband’s head was swollen, cuts on his face. Hands like a ball in handcuffs. The pants were torn. I wanted to take a picture, but they forbade it. They allowed me to change his clothes, but I couldn’t take his T-shirt off because of the handcuffs. He was bruised and cut, his legs purple, bruises. I was shocked. I ask when he will be released. The investigator says he looks like the man in the video handing out weapons on a white Delica. But Timur wasn’t even shown the video,” says Leylim.

After the search, Kim was placed in a temporary detention center. They took his fingerprints and put him in a cell where “similar guys, frightened, beaten” sat. Timur Kim was provided with a state lawyer. A private lawyer hired by the family was never allowed into the police building.

Timur Kim returned home after three and a half weeks behind bars. He says he’s been in “hell.”

The investigative court, which took place online, authorized detention for two months. At the meeting, Timur Kim learned that he was accused of an “act of terrorism.”

“I was shocked to be accused of terrorism. I’ve never held a gun in my life. I wasn’t even in the army. I saw weapons on TV,” says Timur Kim.

Timur Kim sat in the detention center for 12 days, although by law he couldn’t be kept there for no more than 72 hours. “They held him for so long so that during this time the bruises would heal,” Leylim believes.

In mid-January, complaints of torture began to trickle out of detention centres across the country. A commission came to the institution. Timur says he showed them hematomas. But the representatives of the commission, Timur notes, did not have a phone or a camera with them to record photos or videos. He was later taken for a medical examination. No results were reported.

The wife of the defendant did not immediately learn the fact that Kim was transferred from the IVS to the detention center on the outskirts of the city. Leylim was told after she posted a video message on her Instagram page, saying she did not know her husband’s whereabouts.

She went to the prosecutor’s office every day to get a public defender’s document. They demanded a negative PCR test for coronavirus. Leylim received the results of the test, but was unable to go to her husband immediately.

“In the morning I go to my husband to take the “transfer”, and from there I go to the prosecutor’s office. They say to me: ‘Wait until lunch’, then ‘until the evening’, and in the evening they say: ‘Tomorrow’. And so the week passed. Every three days I took a PCR test, the cost of each test is 10 thousand [tenge]. Then I go back to the prosecutor’s office so that they give me a security lawyer’s paper. They say: ‘Why did you come? You were told to stay at home. When it’s ready, then we’ll call you.’ I say, ‘Okay, then I’ll call television, I’ll say you’ve been promising me for a week.’ Another employee comes out with papers and gives them to me: ‘Here’s your paper, permission, take it,’ Leylim recalls.

She received her first visit with her husband 22 days after his detention. They were only given 10 minutes. Both were crying. He asked about the children, she explained that everything was fine, and promised to “pull” him out of the detention center.

In the following days, Leylim was allowed to meet with Timur through the glass, you can communicate by phone. Early mornings began with a queue in front of the jail gates. She got inside by noon. Not without difficulty, access to the defendant was obtained by a private lawyer.

Iron, baton, stun gun. Why did torture take root and become widespread?

In the detention center, Timur says, they were also tortured. They beat them with batons and threatened to rape them.

“They tortured with electricity. 220 [volts] were plugged into the socket. They put wet rags on our hands, then copper wires - and into the socket. I was falling from electric shocks,” says Timur Kim. “They said that now you will not testify, we will rape you, rape you with a baton and break your legs, send this video to your social networks, your relatives, spread it. And then I gave another testimony about myself. I started composing on the fly to draw a rough picture and bring it to the identification of that guy. And the next day my lawyer came with an investigator from the Prosecutor General’s Office. And I said that everything I wrote [testimony] was not true. Then my wife made a fuss: after the lawyer apparently contacted her, he said that I had been tortured in the detention center. And then a few days later, a public figure came to me, also from some kind of commission for the protection of human rights. He said he would make public that I had been tortured. I said, no need, because the staff told me, everyone will leave and the lawyer will leave, the human rights activists will leave, the commission will leave, and you will stay here, with us. ‘You better think about your health, you get out of here over the living.’” So he didn’t say that he was being tortured. 

Meanwhile, Timur Kim’s father-in-law wrote a statement to the anti-corruption service on the facts of torture of his son-in-law. To the staff of this service, Kim told about the experience in the IVS. He was again taken for a medical examination to remove the beatings, but again the results were not informed.

Soon, Timur testified to investigators for the third time. Prosecutors, he said, checked and made sure Kim did not hand out weapons.

“I went to the prosecutor’s office and demanded to call the prosecutor, and Nurlan Auganbayev, the deputy prosecutor, came out. Two other people were with him. I tell them, ‘My husband didn’t even go to the rally, he just drove by with his brother. And my husband shouldn’t be detained for three weeks, not even three minutes. Your staff told my relatives yesterday that the video showing where he was, what time he was, aligns with the testimony during the interrogation. What more do you need? And Azamat Salykhov confirmed that everything is coming together, the guy is not guilty.” And then Auganbayev asked: ‘Why is he then sitting if he is not guilty? Why should this woman with a child run back and forth? Send the car so that at three o’clock [in the afternoon] Timur will be here in the prosecutor’s office, so that we will hand him over to his wife.’ My heart almost stopped. I was falling because of how many days I haven’t slept, haven’t eaten, am just running between the prosecutor’s office and detention center” tells Leyliam.

Timur’s measure of restraint was changed - from “detention” to “recognizance not to leave”. He is still under investigation, although the article was reclassified - now Kim is charged not with “an act of terrorism”, but with “participation in mass riots”. Timur Kim wrote that he was familiar with the case material, and on each page he indicated that he did not agree. Source