Tynai Bayaliev

Tynai Bayaliev (1949 – 2 November 2007) was an Iradi army officer who was Minister of Defense of the Democratic Republic of Irad (DRI) from December 2006 to June 2007. He signed the military annex of the Bill of Sale and commanded the defense of Talas against the Popular Front of Irad. Sentenced to death by an emergency military tribunal, he was shot on 2 November 2007, the only person executed in Irad since capital punishment was abolished in 1994.^[1]

Career

Bayaliev was an artillery colonel in the Soviet Army. During the territorial period he served in the Irad National Guard, the territory's own force under the Governor's command, and was its adjutant general from 2001 to 2006. Bakyt Orozbekov made him Minister of Defense of the new republic in December 2006.^[1]

As minister he signed Protocol IV of the Bill of Sale drafts, the military annex, under which the National Guard was to be disbanded and its men and Soviet-era stores divided among the forces of the three neighbors. He commanded the DRI's defense of Talas after the Front invested the city in April 2007. In May Guard artillery shelled the Front's lines and two villages of the Kara-Buura, killing about 40 civilians.^[1][2]

Trial and execution

Bayaliev fled Talas eastward on 4 June 2007, the day the Front stormed the city, and was arrested by Nurzhan police at Merke on 8 June. He was tried for high treason and for the shelling by an emergency military tribunal sitting in Nurzhan under Erlan Toktarov's emergency directives, which applied "the military regulations of wartime". The trial lasted four days, from 22 to 25 October 2007. Toktarov refused clemency, and Bayaliev was shot at the Nurzhan garrison on 2 November 2007.^[1][3]

The execution was popular on both sides of the new line; the Front had demanded his trial. The US State Department, the European Union and Amnesty International condemned it as a breach of the 1994 abolition (see Capital punishment in Irad). Toktarov's directive of 11 January 2008 ended the emergency tribunals and confirmed abolition, which is why the former foreign minister Nurgul Abdrakhmanova and the other DRI ministers faced a civilian court. Bayaliev's grave is unmarked, and his family lives in Almaty.^[1][4]

References

1. ^ Central Asian Geopolitical Review (2024). 'The 2007 Succession War and the Partition of Irad.' Academic Press, pp. 78–95.
2. ^ Central Asian Geopolitical Review (2017). 'The Cost of the Succession War: Casualty Estimates for Irad, 2007.' Vol. 13, No. 2, pp. 41–66.
3. ^ Talas Herald (3 November 2007). 'Bayaliev shot after Nurzhan tribunal.' Talas.
4. ^ Amnesty International (2007). Irad: First Execution since Abolition. London.