ALMATY, Kazakhstan -- Leading Kazakh opposition figure Zhanbolat Mamai has has lost an appeal and been remanded in custody by a court in the Central Asian nation's largest city, Almaty, on charges of insulting law enforcement officers and distributing "false information," accusations he and his supporters call politically motivated.
The Almaty City Court on April 13 rejected an appeal filed by Mamai's lawyers against his pretrial detention. About a dozen of his supporters rallied in front of the court building during the hearing.
The 33-year-old leader of the unregistered Democratic Party of Kazakhstan was arrested in mid-March on the charges and sent to pretrial detention for at least two months.
Mamai, known for his harsh criticism of the nation's authoritarian government, has been trying to register the Democratic Party of Kazakhstan, but claims he is being prevented from doing so by the government, which he says only permits parties loyal to the political powers to be legally registered.
Kazakhstan has been run by authoritarian President Nursultan Nazarbaev and his successor, Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev, since gaining its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.
Over the past three decades, several opposition figures have been killed and many jailed or forced to flee the tightly controlled former Soviet republic.
Toqaev recently broadened his powers after Nazarbaev and his clan left the tightly controlled oil-rich nation's political scene following unprecedented deadly anti-government protests in January.
Nazarbaev, 81, resigned as president in 2019, but retained sweeping powers as the head of the Security Council, enjoying almost limitless powers as elbasy -- the leader of the nation. Meanwhile, many of his relatives continued to hold important posts in the government, security agencies, and profitable energy groups.
In January, protests that started over a fuel price hike spread across Kazakhstan because of discontent over the cronyism that had long plagued the country.
Toqaev subsequently stripped Nazarbaev of the Security Council role, taking it over himself.