ALMATY - The Internet sites Google, Facebook, Twitter, and LiveJournal are on the list of defendants in a lawsuit filed by Almaty prosecutors seeking the closure of some opposition media publications in Kazakhstan.
“The company Google is a defendant. I don’t know if they know it or not, but they are on trial and they need to present their comment on this lawsuit,” Sergei Utkin, a lawyer for the newspaper Respublika, told a press conference in Almaty on Friday.
Utkin also presented a copy of the prosecutors’ lawsuit, which also names Facebook, Twitter, and LiveJournal, and pages from Respublika as defendants.
Kazakh Prosecutor General’s Office official Nurdaulet Suindikov said on Wednesday that the Almaty prosecutors had filed a lawsuit seeking the recognition of eight newspapers and 23 Internet publications as the media publication Respublika and the half of its publication and dissemination on the territory of Kazakhstan, and also the newspaper Vzglyad and its Internet sites the foreign television channels К+ and Stan-TV and its Internet sites
Suindikov said the lawsuits have been initiated and registered in accordance with the entry into legal force of sentences for Alga leader Vladimir Kozlov, Serik Sapargali, and Akzhanat Aminov, who were found guilty of inciting social divisions and making calls for a forcible seizure of power and the creation of the administration comprised of an organized criminal group.
