“Today the presumption of innocence is not always performed in Kazakhstan. This is not difficult to see in numerous procedures, when not only the court, but also other officials can treat a person as an offender and recognize him as an offender. When the court makes a conditional release depending on guilty pleas,” she said at the opening of the scientific and practical conference “ Presumption of Innocence in Kazakhstan and Protection of Civil Liberties".
The conference is attended by lawyers, judges, scholars, and experts from Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan.
"There have been cases when an administrative arrest is executed according to a court order that has not entered into legal force, and in this case there is no sense in an appeal if it is not filed immediately after the announcement of the judicial act. Violation of the principle according to the Code of Administrative Offenses of Kazakhstan entails invalidity of proceeding and annulment of decisions or recognition of the collected materials as not having evidence, and this is the meaning of the presumption," she said.
Ibrayeva also referred to a procedural agreement as a plea bargain - according to her, the question of plea must be raised at the very beginning of the trial, and without coercion. In fact, it turns out, she believes, that a person is forced in exchange for the freedom to agree to the conditions of the prosecution in order to get lighter punishment, sometimes for something that he did not commit.
Photo source: picture from an open source