If it weren’t sketchy enough that this is the second opposition leader assassinated in Kazakhstan within the past three months, the head of the government intelligence agency has resigned. He did so because several of his officers were implicated in the murder and have confessed, or so the story goes!

ALMATY, Kazakhstan ???????? Kazakhstan’s intelligence chief resigned Wednesday after several of his subordinates were arrested on suspicion of involvement in the slaying of an opposition leader.

The opposition has said the Feb. 11 killing of Altynbek Sarsenbayev was politically motivated and was carried out by the special services.

Nartai Dutbayev submitted his resignation Tuesday, hours after the National Security Committee said that five of its employees were among the six arrested suspects.

President Nursultan Nazarbayev met with him on Wednesday and “accepted his offer of resignation,” the president’s office said.

“I believe that I have no moral right to head the National Security Committee in the given situation,” Dutbayev said after the meeting, according to the president’s office.

He also said that the arrested security service officers “betrayed their duty and the interests of the people” and must be punished.

The Kazakhstan Today news agency said later Wednesday that police arrested the administration chief of parliament’s upper house, Senate, Erzhan Utembayev, on suspicion of involvement in the murder.

Sarsenbayev, a leader of the Nagyz Ak Zhol party, was the second prominent government critic to be killed in the oil-rich Central Asian nation in the past three months.

The strange thing to me about this entire scenario is that usually, while everyone suspects that the intelligence services are the ones that commit these assassinations, it is never actually proven as the government usually fails to carry out an effective investigation. But here they are, five intelligence officers confessing near-immediately to the crime. In fact, it is the speed in which this is happening that makes me question exactly what is going on. Nathan over at the Registan is definitely covering this story, so continue to see his blog for more details as they emerge.

Assassinations of political opposition leaders tend to be a catalyst for protest against the government, so perhaps the opposition will be strengthened by this. My theory is that the government, instead of letting rumors run wild (which would certainly contribute to the above), it decided that it could actually create a greater cloud of legitimacy for itself by promptly detaining some low-level officers within its midst. So then you have an opposition leader washed up and a sense that you’re doing your job as a government. Who benefit the most here?…