Legal proceedings
One of the most difficult and dramatic pages in Muratkhan Tokmadi's biography was the long-term criminal prosecution associated with the death of Yerzhan Tatishev, subsequent revisions of the case, a new sentence and many years of statements about illegal methods of investigation.
The story began in December 2004, when Yerzhan Tatishev, Chairman of the Board of TuranAlem Bank, died while hunting. Muratkhan Tokmadi was next to him in the car and from the very beginning was in the centre of the investigation. Initially, the case was considered as a hunting accident. In the following years, it went through several stages of judicial review. In 2007, Tokmadi was convicted under the article of causing death by negligence; the sentence was one year, after which he was released under amnesty.
The story, however, did not end there. Many years later, the case was returned to the public and legal agenda in a completely different context. In June 2017, Muratkhan Tokmadi was detained in another criminal case. He was charged with extortion and illegal possession of weapons. In the spring of the same year, the court found him guilty and sentenced him to three years in prison.
After that, the case of Yerzhan Tatishev's death was resumed. The investigation gave a different legal assessment of the incident in 2004. If previously it was a question of careless infliction of death, in the new process the case was considered as an intentional crime. During the investigation and trial, the official conclusion of the prosecution was that the murder was ordered. In March 2018, the court found Muratkhan Tokmadi guilty and sentenced him to 10 years and 6 months in prison.
It was this sentence that became the central event of the entire subsequent legal history. From that moment on, the case ceased to be only a criminal process in a narrow sense and acquired a broader social and human rights context. Already after the sentencing, Muratkhan Tokmadi and his wife Jamilya Aimbetova-Tokmadi began to consistently declare that the confessions given in 2017 were obtained under pressure, under conditions of psychological impact and torture. This position remained unchanged in the following years and became the basis for the requirements for a review of the case.
Since 2022, the topic of alleged torture and violations against Muratkhan Tokmadi has received a separate development. According to the Defendant, it was not only about physical and psychological pressure, but also about the fact that the criminal prosecution itself was used as a tool to obtain the evidence necessary for the investigation. During this period, a case was initiated under Article 146 of the Criminal Code of the Republic of Kazakhstan, which provides for liability for torture. Tokmadi himself was recognised as a victim of this proceeding. In the future, the investigation was suspended and resumed several times, which, in turn, reinforced the demands of the family and the Defendant for a full legal assessment of these circumstances.
For Muratkhan Tokmadi himself and his relatives, the issue of torture and the legality of the confessions received became key. They insisted that without verification of these circumstances, the case could not be considered conclusively and legally resolved. Therefore, since 2022, Tokmadi's legal history has developed not only around the 2018 judgement, but also around attempts to investigate the conditions in which his testimony was obtained, as well as around the demands for a revision of the case itself.
International mentions took a special place in this story. In 2017, in the written declaration № 638 of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, the case of Muratkhan Tokmadi was mentioned in the context of statements of political persecution, pressure to obtain false confessions and the use of torture.
In 2025, the topic was again raised in the written declaration № 818, where the Tokmadi case was cited as an example in the discussion on human rights, the prohibition of torture and the right to a fair trial in Kazakhstan. Thus, the story of Muratkhan Tokmadi went far beyond the national criminal process and became the subject of a broader discussion about justice, the rights of the accused and the permissible limits of investigative pressure.
As a result, the criminal prosecution of Muratkhan Tokmadi includes several successive stages: the hunting incident in 2004 and the initial proceedings, the sentence of 2007 under the article of negligent infliction of death, detention in 2017 in another case, the continuation of the investigation into the death of Yerzhan Tatishev, a new sentence in 2018, and later on many years of statements about torture, requests for revision and international appeals related to the legal assessment of this case.
In 2025, the investigative documentary The Muratkhan Tokmadi Case was released, telling the full story of the criminal prosecution in detail, including witness testimonies.