Rakhat Aliyev

The widow of Kazakh political exile Rakhat Aliyev, the millionaire who took refuge in Malta for years, yesterday said it was “out of the question” that her husband had committed suicide.

“For me, it is out of the question that Rakhat voluntarily ended his own life. He loved his family far too much to do so, and would never have deserted us,” she said.

She spoke for the first time yesterday through a letter that was read out in Vienna, where Mr Aliyev’s lawyers held a press conference in which they too argued there were suspicious circumstances surrounding his death.

The former son-in-law and sworn enemy of Kazakh dictator Nursultan Nazarbayev was found dead last Tuesday in the bathroom of the single prison cell in Vienna, where he was awaiting trial for the murder of two bankers in Kazakhstan.

Read more in Times of Malta.