The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns today’s sentencing of journalists Joomart Duulatov and Aleksandr Aleksandrov to five-year prison terms in Kyrgyzstan and calls for their immediate release.

Duulatov and Aleksandrov, who worked as camera operators for investigative outlet Kloop, were detained on May 28 on charges of calling for mass unrest over videos produced by investigative journalist Bolot Temirov, founder of the YouTube-based anti-corruption outlet Temirov Live. The outlet’s director, Makhabat Tajibek kyzy, who is also Temirov’s wife, was sentenced on October 10, 2024, to six years in prison on the same charges.

Duulatov and Aleksandrov denied the charges. “All the videos cited by the prosecution were published by Bolot Temirov,” one of the defense lawyers said at today’s hearing. “Neither Kloop Media nor the defendants themselves distributed them.” Kloop said court-appointed experts had failed to identify any calls for mass unrest in the videos.

“The absolutely absurd five-year sentences handed down to Kloop operator Aleksandr Aleksandrov and former operator Joomart Duulatov show the lengths to which Kyrgyz authorities under Sadyr Japarov will go to crush outlets reporting on top-level government corruption,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator. “Kyrgyzstan has shifted from being a haven for the free press to a country that regularly jails journalists in retaliation for their work. Kyrgyz authorities must release Aleksandrov and Duulatov along with Makhabat Tajibek kyzy, the imprisoned director of Temirov Live.”

Two unnamed accountants at Kloop were given suspended sentences of three years each on the same charges.

Kloop’s founder Rinat Tuhvatshin called the verdict “cannibalistic, senseless, and illogical.” He previously called the arrests “abductions,” stating that the State Committee for National Security had conducted searches of the outlet’s editorial office and questioned the journalists without lawyers present, and did not allow them to make any phone calls.

A local partner in the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, a global investigative network, Kloop regularly reports on alleged corruption and abuses by government officials. The outlet’s website has been blocked in Kyrgyzstan since 2023. Authorities forcibly shuttered Kloop last year and most of its journalists work from exile.