ASTANA. May 30 (Interfax) - Some 13,000 convicts may be amnestied in Kazakhstan on the occasion of the 20th independence anniversary in December 2011.
"Judging by our estimates, some 2,200 convicts serving their time in prison and 10,600 convicts, whose freedom is not limited, may be amnestied with this bill," the parliament's lower house press office said on Monday.
The amnesty bill was discussed at a working group meeting earlier in the day.
"It is planned to drop all of the criminal charges and to close all of the minor and medium crime cases the courts have not heard before the endorsement of the bill," the report said.
That would be the seventh amnesty in independent Kazakhstan. The latest one took place in January 2006, also on the occasion of an independence anniversary.