A Kyrgyz court official said on January 18 that a member of the opposition Butun (United) Kyrgyzstan party, Chynygul Sherkulova, was sentenced to three years in prison last month on a charge of distributing false information online but allowed to start serving her prison term later, as she has three young children, RFE/RL’s Kyrgyz Service reported.
The charge against Sherkulova stemmed from her post about the alleged handing of some Kyrgyz territory to Tajikistan, which ended up being false. Butun Kyrgyzstan’s leader, Adakhan Madumarov, has been under arrest since September for his role in signing a Kyrgyz-Tajik border deal in 2009 when he led the country’s Security Council.
