/EIN News/ In the middle of next week the human rights activist from Kazakhstan, the leader of the group uniting family members of the former Kazakhstan high-ranking official’s victims, will arrive to German capital to ask European public for help. Her name is Armangul Kapasheva (37), she is the wife of well-known Kazakhstan businessman Zholdas Timraliyev. Her husband has been missing for over two years after he went on January 2007 to meet Rakhat Aliyev. At that time Aliyev was one of the most eminent political figures in Kazakhstan. He was an ex-deputy head of the Kazakhstan secret service, high-ranking diplomat, husband of the president’s daughter. But, it turned out that he is guilty not only in taking Timraliyev’s life but also in taking lives of dozens of other people. In the middle of 2007 Aliyev escaped to Austria and said that he was a “dissident”, a “democrat”, a “fighter against corruption” and against that very regime that had made him almost all-powerful.
Which “democratic reforms” Aliyev refers to and what was exactly his “struggle with corruption” is left unknown. Recent years a “reformer” has spent abroad, visiting Kazakhstan only for short while. Since 2002 he was an ambassador in the Republic of Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia, Serbia and Montenegro. Until then since 1997 he was a high-ranking official in the NSC – Kazakh KGB. Before that he was a financial police head and due to the “corrupted regime” took a training course in the Academy of FBI in the USA. Aliyev obtained the rank of Major General and was appointed deputy head of the NSC. What were his “democratic reforms” and “victories over corruption” except for establishing totalitarian control over Kazakhstan media and partially over banking system of Kazakhstan, no one can say.
But what we can say is that the reason of his refuge was cleaning dozens of crimes that he committed shielded by his uniform and diplomatic status. The former son-in-law of the Kazakhstan president, Rakhat Aliyev, was sentenced to 40 years of prison. Inter alia he was accused in kidnappings and murders of eminent bankers, politicians and human rights activists.
However the authorities of Austria who doubt objectiveness of the Kazakhstan legislative system granted political asylum to the ex-general of the NSC. No requests from Kazakhstan could influence it.
Armangul Kapasheva and her assistants from the “Tagdyr” foundation have the best possible chance to change the situation and punish the criminal. They are not officials, not “enemies of reforms” and not the “corrupted regime”. They are relatives of Alieyv’s victims, and they are asking why the murderer and kidnapper of their kin enjoys protection of a European country. As explained by Kapasheva, she possesses a number of proofs that it was Aliyev who had a hand in her husband’s loss. In the beginning of the year she visited the capital of Austria and gave testimony to the local investigators. Partially the materials that she handed to the prosecutor’s office in Vienna one can find on the web-site http://rakhataliyev.com/en/ .
Today, going to Germany, she wants to show European public that Rakhat Aliyev is not a dissident, not an oppositionist, and that he is guilty in everything that the Kazakhstan authorities are accusing him in. As explained by representatives of the democratic opposition of Kazakhstan they were very much surprised to know that they obtained a new “leader”, the one who had persecuted them several years ago being deputy head of the NSC in Kazakhstan.
Armangul Kapasheva hopes to explain to European democratic community that “Aliyev’s case” is not about protecting a refugee from persecution. One should rather try and study out the story, and the best way of doing it is to carry out an investigation, according to European rules and with the help of European authorities, if Austrian judges don’t trust their colleagues from Kazakhstan. As highlighted by Kapasheva, if necessary she is ready to file a case to the International tribunal in the Hague.
In Berlin she will meet many human rights activists and, that is no less important, journalists. May be it will be the free press of Germany that will manage to give a stimulus to the Aliyev’s case and the murderer accused in Kazakhstan will find himself on the dock in European court.
/EIN News/
