Kazakh court puts campaigner against Chinese camps under house arrest for 2 months

A Kazakh court has placed an activist who campaigned on behalf of ethnic Kazakhs in China under house arrest on the charge of calling for a "jihad" against the Chinese, state prosecutors said. Serikzhan Bilash, a naturalized Kazakh citizen born in the Chinese region of Xinjiang, leads Atajurt, a group that has worked for the release of ethnic Kazakhs from "re-education" camps where activists say more than a million ethnic Uighurs and other Muslims are held.

Police detained Bilash in Almaty, Kazakhstan's biggest city, last weekend and brought him before a court in Astana, the Central Asian nation's capital. In a statement issued late on Monday, the Astana prosecutor's office said Bilash is suspected of making the jihad comment at a public event last month. He has yet to make a plea. Prosecutors said the court placed Bilash under house arrest for two months while they prepare for trial.

(With inputs from agencies.)