[attach id="441185" size="medium"]Rakyat Aliyev was found hanging in his Vienna jail cell in February.[/attach]
The case involving Rakyat Aliyev came to a conclusion last weekend when an Austrian jury found him and two co-accused Kazakhs not guilty of murdering two bankers in 2007.
The three-month trial lacked its main defendant after Dr Aliyev, the former son-in-law of Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev, was found hanging in his Vienna jail cell in February. He had spent time in Malta saying he feared for his life based on his conviction that he was being hounded by his country’s secret service.
Dr Aliyev was close to the oil-rich Central Asian country’s authoritarian leader until the two men fell out in 2007. A wealthy businessman, former diplomat, intelligence official and banker, Dr Aliyev was accused of being the mastermind behind the murder of two bankers – an accusation he consistently denied.
His trial was in fact held in Austria because the country refused to extradite him to Kazakhstan citing doubts about whether he would get a fair trial and instead opened its own investigation. It became clear early on that the whole case seemed concocted based on false evidence generated in his home country.
Rakhat was working hard to prove he was not guilty of the charges
Last month, a Vienna judge confirmed claims by the deceased Dr Aliyev that accusations against him were based on manipulated evidence by the Kazakh authorities persecuting him. Last weekend’s judgment vindicates Dr Aliyev and allows some degree of consolation to Elnara Shorazova, his wife, who supported him throughout.
“Until his last day alive, Rakhat was working hard to prove he was not guilty of the charges brought against him… that was all he was fighting for during the last few years of his life,” Ms Shorazova had said at the start of the trial.
Austrian prosecutors as well as attorneys representing the victims appealed the decision.
Dr Aliyev left Malta soon after he gave a rare interview to The Sunday Times of Malta in July 2013. While here he published a book entitled The Godfather-in-law about Kazakhstan’s irremovable president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, and his iron grip on the country.
He handed himself in to Austrian authorities to face his trial and prove his innocence. When he was found hanged in his cell two months before the trial was due to start, the authorities immediately concluded it was suicide – a move that did not make sense to his wife and lawyers.
While Dr Aliyev’s lawyers initially discounted the idea of suicide, two separate autopsies didn’t reveal any evidence of foul play. His lawyers maintain that Dr Aliyev would still be alive today, and a free man, if Austrian authorities had listened to arguments that evidence against him was not to be trusted.