Ex-intelligence director arrested in deadly unrest

MOSCOW — The former head of Kazakhstan’s counterintelligence and anti-terror agency has been arrested on charges of attempted government overthrow in the wake of violent protests that the president has blamed on foreignbacked terrorists.

The arrest of Karim Masimov was announced Saturday by the National Security Committee, which Masimov headed until he was removed last week by President KassymJomart Tokayev.

Authorities say security forces killed 26 demonstrators in this week’s unrest and that 18 law-enforcement officers died. More than 4,400 people have been arrested, the Interior Ministry said.

The protests in the Central Asian nation were the most widespread since Kazakhstan’s independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.

The unrest began in the country’s far west as protests against a sharp rise in prices for liquefied petroleum gas that is widely used as vehicle fuel. The protests spread to the country’s largest city, Almaty, where demonstrators seized and burned government buildings.

At Tokayev’s request, the Collective Security Treaty Organization, a Russia-led military alliance of six former Soviet states, authorized sending about 2,500 mostly Russian troops to Kazakhstan as peacekeepers.

Some of the troops are guarding government facilities in the capital, Nur-Sultan, which “made it possible to release part of the forces of Kazakhstani law enforcement

agencies and redeploy them to Almaty to participate in the counter-terrorist operation,” according to a statement from Tokayev’s office.

Tokayev said Friday that he had authorized security forces to shoot to kill those participating in unrest. On Saturday, there were no immediate reports of trouble in Almaty. Police dispersed a demonstration and detained people in the

city of Aktau, while sporadic gunfire was heard in Kyzylorda, Russian news agency Sputnik said.

No details were given about what Masimov, the former security agency head, was alleged to have done that would constitute an attempted government overthrow. The National Security Committee, a successor to the Soviet-era KGB, is responsible for counterintelligence,

the border guards service and anti-terror activities.

Although the protests began as denunciations of the neardoubling of LPG prices at the start of the year, their spread and intense violence indicate deep dissatisfaction in the former Soviet republic.

Russian Defense Ministry Press Service Troops from Belarus leave a Russian military transport at an airfield in Kazakhstan. A Russian-led security bloc has dispatched forces to Kazakhstan to help quell violent protests.