Kazakh opposition leader found shot dead-police

ALMATY, Feb 13 (Reuters) - A Kazakh former minister and leading member of the Central Asian state's political opposition was found shot dead on Monday, police said.

The body of Altynbek Sarsenbaiuly, a 43-year-old critic of President Nursultan Nazarbayev's government, was found along with two other corpses lying beside a country road near Almaty, the country's biggest city.

All three men had gunshot wounds, police said in a statement on their official Web site www.police.kz.

"The Interior Minister has taken the investigation under his personal control," the statement said. It gave no other details.

Earlier on Monday, the Kazakhstan Today news agency quoted unnamed sources as saying Sarsenbaiuly had been hunting near Almaty.

Sarsenbaiuly briefly held a ministerial post in 2004 but resigned after three months to protest against a September parliamentary election that he said was rigged by the president's supporters.

Before joining the opposition he had been an ambassador to Russia and held several ministerial posts.

He was the second prominent Kazakh opposition figure to die in mysterious circumstances in recent months.

Zamanbek Nurkadilov, a former mayor of Almaty and close ally of Nazarbayev who switched to the opposition in 2004, was found dead in November with three gunshot wounds to the chest and head.

Police have said they suspect Nurkadilov committed suicide, but the opposition said he was murdered and said they could not rule out a political motive.