Kazakh girl, 20, may be jailed in China

ASTANA. KAZINFORM A twenty-year-old native of Kazakhstan, student of the Kazakh state women's pedagogical university (teacher's training) Akzharkyn Turlybai, has been detained and taken to the detention facility in Guangzhou a couple of weeks ago, Channel 7 said.

The Chinese law enforcement agencies charge her with drug trafficking which carries life imprisonment and death penalty. The family of Akzharkyn Turlybai asks for the Kazakh Foreign Ministry help. They are confident their daughter was victimized by swindlers. It was her ever-first trip abroad. According to her mother, one of her daughter's friends persuaded her to make a little money as a courier of trendy clothes. She allegedly introduced her daughter to some Alyona and Johnny, a native of Nigeria, who acted as a bartender at one of the night clubs of Almaty. Akzharkyn Turlybai was last heard on March 9. According to press secretary of the Kazakh Foreign Ministry Nurzhan Aitmakhanov, the Kazakh Embassy in China directed an official request on this matter asking the authorities to clarify the situation.