ALMATY, 09 January 2022, (TON): Kazakhstan authorities have detained the former head of the country’s national security committee on suspicion of treason, they said as the former Soviet republic is roiled by its worst unrest in 30 years.

According to the committee “Karim Massimov, who was fired from the powerful intelligence body this week as protests raged across the nation, was detained along with several other officials.”

Reuters was unable to immediately contact Massimov, a two-time ex-prime minister who worked closely with former President Nursultan Nazarbayev, the country’s ruler for three decades until he turned over the presidency to Kassym-Jomart Tokayev in 2019.

Dozens of people have died and public buildings across Kazakhstan have been ransacked and torched over the past week in the worst violence, experienced in the Central Asian nation, a major oil and uranium producer, since it became independent in the early 1990s as the Soviet Union collapsed.

The demonstrations began as a response to a fuel price hike but swelled into a broad movement against Tokayev’s Russian-backed government and 81-year-old Nazarbayev, whose family is widely believed to have retained influence in Nur-Sultan, the purpose-built capital that bears his name.