Watchdog

Relatives of Kadyrjan Batyrov, a fugitive leader of the ethnic Uzbek community in Kyrgyzstan, say Batyrov has died in Ukraine after eight years of self-imposed exile.

Batyrov's relatives told RFE/RL that the 62-year-old businessman died in his sleep in the Black Sea port city of Odesa late on December 4.

The relatives did not provide further details.

Batyrov fled Kyrgyzstan after deadly clashes between ethnic Uzbeks and Kyrgyz in Kyrgyzstan's southern regions of Osh and Jalal-Abad in June 2010.

At least 450 people were killed and thousands more were injured or displaced as a result of the violence.

The majority of victims were ethnic Uzbeks.

Batyrov received political asylum in Sweden in 2011.

He was sentenced to life in prison by a Kyrgyz court after being put on trial in absentia in 2011 and 2014, with the court finding Batyrov guilty of inciting ethnic hatred and organizing the 2010 clashes.

Batyrov maintained his innocence, declaring that the trials against him were political retaliation by the Kyrgyz government.

In September 2016, Batyrov addressed an OSCE conference in Warsaw where he criticized efforts by Kyrgyzstan's government to investigate his 2010 escape from the former Soviet republic.

MOSCOW -- The embezzlement trial of Russian theater and film director Kirill Serebrennikov has been adjourned for five days due to the hospitalization of a co-defendant in the case.

Judge Yelena Akkuratova adjourned the Moscow trial until December 10 after the lawyer for the former director of Moscow's Gogol Center, Aleksei Malobrodsky, announced at a December 5 hearing that Malobrodsky had been hospitalized with a "serious" heart condition.

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The high-profile trial began on November 7.

Serebrennikov's August 2017 arrest drew international attention and prompted accusations that Russian authorities were targeting cultural figures who are at odds with President Vladimir Putin's government.

The acclaimed 49-year-old director initially was charged with organizing the embezzlement of 68 million rubles, or about $1 million, in state funds granted from 2011-14 to Seventh Studio, a nonprofit organization that Serebrennikov established.

In January 2018, prosecutors raised the amount Serebrennikov and his three co-defendants are accused of embezzling to 133 million rubles, or about $2 million.

All four defendants -- Serebrennikov, producers Malobrodsky and Yury Itin, and former Culture Ministry employee Sofia Apfelbaum, have pleaded not guilty.

Serebrennikov has called the trial "absurd."

A fifth person charged in the case, accountant Nina Maslyayeva, pleaded guilty and has provided testimony used as evidence against the defendants.

Maslyayeva is to be tried separately.

Serebrennikov's supporters say the case was part of a politically motivated crackdown on the arts community ahead of Russia's March 2018 presidential election in which Putin, a longtime Soviet KGB officer who has been president or prime minister since 1999, won a fourth term in office.

Serebrennikov previously had taken part in antigovernment protests and voiced concerns about the increasing influence in Russia of the Russian Orthodox Church, whose ties with the state have increased under Putin.