The Kazakh Foreign Ministry was taking measures to...

The Kazakh Foreign Ministry was taking measures to ease the sentences passed by Chinese courts on four Kazakh citizens found guilty of committing crimes in China, the director of the Kazakh Foreign Ministry's consular service department, Valikhan Konurbayev, said.
Participants of the ninth round of Kazakh-Chinese meetings of the foreign ministries' consular services discussed issues related to the protection of the interests and rights of Kazakh and Chinese citizens.
"Four Kazakh citizens who were sentenced for committing crimes on Chinese territory are in that country now. We held negotiations yesterday in order to find out the possibilities of reducing the terms of their imprisonment," Konurbayev said.
One of the Kazakh citizens had been sentenced to capital punishment for drug smuggling, he said. Later on, as a result of intervention by the Foreign Ministry and other competent bodies of Kazakhstan, the death sentence was converted to life imprisonment.