May 27, 2009
/EIN News/ -- For over two years the authorities of Kazakhstan have been trying to bring ex-general of its secret police, ex-ambassador of in Austria and president's ex son-in-law, Rakhat Aliyev, back from Austria to his motherland. The authorities of Austria gave him refuge, noting that they don't believe in justice of the Kazakhstan law: in Astana Aliyev was sentenced to 40 years of imprisonment for murders, tortures, kidnappings, financial fraud and a coup attempt, but Aliyev himself states that he is a democrat and dissident who is suffering for his ideas. Whether it is true or not, but there is another point of view on the fact why Vienna won't ever extradite Aliyev, no matter what evidence of his illegal activity is presented by Kazakhstan.
Russian oppositionist Novaya gazeta newspaper reports that unwillingness of Vienna to extradite Aliyev is directly connected with economic interests of Austria in Kazakhstan, and also with partnership established by the former son-in-law of the president of Kazakhstan in the Alpine Republic.
Referring to the Western mass-media, the newspaper is writing that Aliyev "sponsored" Austrian legal authorities while being an ambassador there. In due time the Austrian mass-media published the so-called secret list of “Vienna police friends society donors. This list of 16 people contains the Austrian TV directors, the former vice-Chancellor, several local businessmen and the only foreigner, Rakhat Aliyev.
Therefore, to the mind of a Novaya gazeta journalist, Aliyev and his assistants have a guarantee from the West that he won't be extradited or sentenced in the West. The foundation of this guarantee is not even businessmen lobby, but information on internal and external policy of Kazakhstan, on financial and political elite of the Republic and on other details that Aliyev knew while being in power. At the same time the former ambassador shows to the European society that his influence in Kazakhstan still remains, therefore the authorities of Kazakhstan worry that Europe would parlay on him as on a new leader of this important country in Central Asia.
The members of the Tagdyr fund, the organization that connects families of those bankers, political and public figures missing or, possibly, killed by Rakhat Aliyev and his accomplices, question why the authorities of Austria cover up Aliyev's tracks. In Aliyev's book God-father-in-law that has been recently published, he reckons with his former father-in-law, the president of Kazakhstan Nazarbayev, but he doesn't speak of the fate of the people he abducted. For years the Tagdyr fund leaders have been collecting evidence that could have shed light on the place where the supposed Rakhat Aliyev's victims - or at least their graves - are. But information that they collected (part of it is published on the website
http://rakhataliyev.com/en/ ) is not taken seriously in Vienna. And this fact convinces the families of the victims that they are right their suspicions concerning Austrian links of the Kazakh refugee. After all, the Tagdyr fund is not the government or president of Kazakhstan. It's just a group of people who want to know what happened to their relatives. These are wives who lost their husbands, and children, who are waiting for their fathers. They are not connected to this Big game deploying around the former Nazarbayev's son-in-law.
Leaders of the Tagdyr fund, coming to European countries, have been trying to attract attention to the other side of Aliyev's case for months. They are not interested in political riots and big show-ups. If the Austrian law doesn't trust the Kazakhstan court, - they say, - let them judge Aliyev in Austria, in Germany, in any country of Western Europe. Armangul Kapasheva, the head of "Tagdyr" will arrive in Berlin in the middle of June to teel the true story of Rakhat Aliyev. She still believes that she can evoke a response from European society, that European justice is still more valuable than the Kazakh oil, gas, uranium and gold.
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