Rakhat Aliyev to be tried in Vienna (tengrinews.kz 08.04.13)

Superior Land Court of Vienna has started an investigation into activities of the former Kazakhstan ambassador to Austria and former son-in-law of Kazakhstan President Rakhat Aliyev, Interfax-Kazakhstan reports citing Vremya newspaper.

“The trial will be held in the Superior Land Court of Vienna on the case of former Kazakhstan ambassador to Austria Rakhat Aliyev (Shoraz) and his accomplices, accused of kidnapping and murder of top managers of Kazakhstan’s Nurbank Aibar Khassenov and Zholdas Timraliyev,” the newspaper writes citing the court.

According to the newspaper, Aliyev was not showing up for the hearings. Earlier the lawyer of the families of the murdered managers Gabriel Lansky said at a press-conference in Almaty that the Superior Land Court of Vienna did not find any political grounds in the criminal actions against Aliyev.

Lansky stressed that the Austrian court considered results of the investigation in Kazakhstan and the sentence pronounced in Kazakhstan on the Nurbank case (kidnapping and murder of two top managers) reasonable and the testimony of Armangul Kapashea (the widow of Zholdas Timraliyev) and Abilmazhen Galimov (former chairman of Nurbank) trustworthy.

According to the lawyer, the results of the investigation made by Vienna’s prosecutors not only confirm but also increased the suspicions against Aliyev. The ex-ambassador was sentenced in absence in Kazakhstan for several grave crimes and the new accusations of murder of Nurbank managers Zhodas Timraliyev and Aibar Khassenov were presented later. He was sentenced to imprisonment and put on the wanted list.

According to the investigation, Timraliyev and Khassenov were kidnapped from Nurbank head office in Almaty on January 31, 2007 by Aliyev’s group who was the bank’s owner at the moment, The investigation found that the managers were captured, tortured and humiliated for several days.

Their bodies were discovered only on May 13, 2011. Aliyev, the former ambassador of Kazakhstan to Austria and Nursultan Nazarbayev’s son-in-law until 2007, was sentenced in Kazakhstan in 2008 to 40 years of imprisonment for commitment of several grave crimes, including, betrayal of the motherland, planning a coup and kidnapping two top managers.

The Kazakhstan court rulings were made in absence, as Aliyev has been hiding abroad since 2007 and the Austrian party earlier refused to extradite him to Kazakhstan.