A former economy minister in Kazakh, Kuandyk Bishimbayev, has been sentenced to 24 years in prison for the murder of his wife, Saltanat Nukenova.

A court in Kazakhstan jailed Mr Bishimbayev after he was found guilty of torture and murder in the case which occurred on November 2023.

Mr Bishimbayev would have to serve his sentence in a maximum-security prison.

The former minister beat the late Nukenova in a family restaurant in the Kazakh capital, Astana, on November 9 and his cousin Bakhytzhan Bayzhanov was found guilty of helping him to cover up the murder.

Mr Bayzhanov too was sentenced to four years in prison.

Both men have 15 days to appeal the ruling.

“I hope this non-human would be given a life sentence,” the late Nukenova’s father, Amengeldy Nukenov, told journalists before the verdict was read.

At the commencement of the trial, scores of people urged authorities to adopt harsher penalties for domestic violence.

The 24-year-long sentence has taken the public, especially rights activists, aback.

“Of course, we all expected a life sentence because the woman was killed deliberately with inconceivable violence,” Zhanar Sekerbayeva, cofounder of Kazakhstan’s LGBTQ women’s rights group called, Feminita, told VOA after the verdict.

Mr Bishimbayev served as an aide of the former president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, and as national economy minister until his arrest in 2017 for corruption crimes.

In March 2018, Mr Bishimbayev was sentenced to 10 years in prison but was released on parole in September 2019.

The murder trial drew parallels to the “trial of the century” of former U.S. football star O.J. Simpson, who in the 1990s was charged with the murder of his former wife. 

However, Mr Simpson was acquitted in 1995 in Nicole Brown Simpson’s death.

Mr Bishimbayev’s case brought attention to the wider topic of domestic violence in Kazakhstan and elsewhere in the region.