Kalyk Imankulov, chairman of SNB, announced that the investigation will last for two to three months, and said more arrests could take place. Meanwhile, the SNB raided all the main state agencies in order to check the security level of secret documentation. According to Imankulov, documents were allegedly leaked from the SNB, Chief Military Intelligence (GUUR), Security Council, President’s administration, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Justice, Prime-Minister’s office, Ministry of Defense, and others.
There were several main hypotheses on the possible reasons behind the arrests, and rumors mushroomed against the background of a lack of prompt explanations from SNB sources. Initially the arrested were said to be charged with spying for a religious extremist organization, supposedly Hizb-ut-Tahrir. This was probably inferred when on June 28, SNB Deputy Chairman Tokon Mamytov at a government meeting raised the issue of the threat posed by extremist organizations and their techniques to infiltrate to high echelons of power. The Ar-Namys opposition party claimed state officials were trying to limit political activities and freedom of the press before the upcoming elections. The NGO Coalition for Democracy and Civil Society questioned the legality and seriousness of espionage charges; it should be noted that this coalition suffered from increased attention of secret services during the recent bugging scandal in the Parliament. Others went further in seeing it as a play of muscles or simple eye-for-eye game between SNB and the Ministry of Interior, considering that SNB arrested a person a MOI official, on top of that a close relative of a high level official, and that back in June, the Interior Ministry arrested four acting officers from SNB on charges of armed robbery. Details of this event surfaced in the media outlets on July 2, during the peak of the ongoing espionage case.
This espionage scandal is the first occasion in Kyrgyzstan where officials of several government agencies have been arrested and charged with gathering documents to sell to another state. Whatever the direction of rumors, the fact remains that there has been a leak of documents carrying state secrets. The preliminary results of the raids carried out by the SNB on the premises of other state agencies show that the methods of keeping and handling official, not to mention secret, correspondence is unsatisfactory. The conclusion was clearly that an insider wanting to leak secret documents at different state agencies would be able to do so relatively easily. Surprisingly, there are practically no mechanisms for securing government correspondence in Kyrgyzstan. It is telling that such a major government shortcoming became known to the wider public only as a result of internal clashes between state agencies.
This case was widely used by different groups in order to voice their own fears, and opinions. Some statements were based on previous experiences from secret services. Even at present, if the SNB were right, and it was a regular operation within its terms of references and power, its past scandals and failures left an unpleasant imprint in the memories of people, which seriously hinders public trust.
The first group of five arrested persons were accused of conspiring and merely copying and passing on secret documents to a third party, namely a “foreign interested state”. Their profiles can not really serve as a ground for breeding conspiracy theories. But the arrest of a Colonel from the Border Guards Service, and most importantly an-ex SNB employee is another story. At the press conference, the SNB showed a video tape featuring Colonel Kelsenbek Akimaliev confessing that he passed classified documents to a deputy of the Zhogorku Kenesh (Parliament), namely Alisher Abdimomunov. Later, those secret documents were used in initiating a scandal of planting “bugs” in the offices of the Zhogorku Kenesh by SNB agents. The “sincere” confessions of Akimaliev could have further negative repercussions for the political elite in Kyrgyzstan. Abdimomunov in his turn stated that Akimaliev’s confessions were given under pressure, which is not implausible, and went on to charge that the SNB is trying to influence the work of a commission organized by deputies to investigate the violation of the constitutional rights of parliamentarians. Abdimomunov said that he and other members of the commission never met Akimaliev and thus never received any documents from him.
Obviously some will see SNB’s hand in many political affairs. However, shaking off the popular conspiracy theories one can conclude that it is vital for each state agency to ensure the safety and security of secret documents, something hardly practiced in Kyrgyzstan. Further, by failing to give prompt responses, the press offices of corresponding agencies help give birth to rumors. Moreover, it seems that intra-governmental rivalries cloud and distract those agencies from focusing on real issues related to ensuring national security.
The lack of recent information on the situation could be explained in two ways, one is that SNB still looking for some evidences; second it is summer and all the interested parts are on vacations; and probably it is became rather obvious to many people that it is purely a criminal case without any political connotation.
Book S. Frederick Starr and Svante E. Cornell,