Anti-drug police in Kyrgyzstan have arrested on Saturday evening award-winning investigative journalist Bolot Temirov after a raid of his independent news outlet TemirovLive, which focuses on exposing high-level corruption.

Temirov’s colleague said that police told the staff that a woman had accused Temirov of forcing her to take drugs but that officers had actually planted a package of drugs on him during the raid.

“They told us all to lie on the floor and not to look up, and to put our hands behind our backs,” said Aizhan Alymseitova. “They searched everyone, and told everyone to take everything out of their pockets. When they came to Bolot Temirov, they checked his back pocket and pulled out a small plastic packet.”

“They put it there themselves, and then pulled it out,” she said.

Alymseitova was speaking to a reporter from Kloop, OCCRP’s local partner, in the hallway outside the TemirovLive office in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan’s capital. Officers did not let journalists inside, allowing only one lawyer to enter.

Later, the police confiscated several of the organization’s computers. As of publication time, the situation was still unfolding.

Aktilek Kaparov, another TemirovLive journalist, speculated that the raid must have been motivated by the outlet’s work. “For over a year we’ve been putting out investigations about top officials in the country,” he said.

TemirovLive’s latest investigation, about a corrupt scheme involving the head of Kyrgyzstan’s security services, Kamchybek Tashiev, was published yesterday.

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