Rights group says prominent jailed Kazakhstan activist files complaint with UN
A U.S. advocacy group says a widely respected human rights activist in Kazakhstan has filed a complaint with the United Nations over his imprisonment, which he says was designed to silence him.
Yevgeny Zhovtis was sentenced to four years in prison in 2009 for his involvement in a fatal car accident after a trial that attracted wide international criticism for appearing to be politically motivated.
The New York-based Open Society Justice Initiative said in a statement Wednesday that after all his appeals in Kazakhstan failed, Zhovtis has written to the UN Human Rights Committee.
The complaint sets an embarrassing precedent for the authoritarian Central Asian nation as it seeks to mold an image as a modernizing nation trying to shed its Soviet past.
