Fifty plainclothes Italian special agents raided a villa on the outskirts of Rome on May 29 and absconded with Alma Shalabayeva and her 6-year old daughter, Alua. Two days later, after uncharacteristically swift legal proceedings, mother and daughter were whisked away to Kazakhstan, a resource-rich former Soviet state in Central Asia.
The authoritarian leader of Kazakhstan visited David Cameron in Downing Street while he was on a private trip to London with his family this week, it has emerged. In a visit, which was not officially briefed to the media, the Prime Minister showed President Nursultan Nazarbayev around his official residence and the pair had a short "informal meeting" on Monday.
Rome (dpa) - Italy may take action against Kazakhstan's ambassador if the central Asian republic fails to ensure the wellbeing of the wife and daughter of a dissident that Rome has wrongly deported, Foreign Minister Emma Bonino said Wednesday.
Multimillionaire accused of human rights abuses, torture, money laundering and murder had approached MaltaToday's ownership to buy the company.
Valletta (dpa) - Rakhat Aliyev, a former member of the Kazakh regime, said Sunday from his exile in Malta that secret agents from the energy-rich Central Asian republic are on a mission to "kidnap or kill" him.
A political storm unleashed by the whirlwind expulsion of a dissident Kazakh oligarch's wife and daughter has further strained the tense relations within the coalition parties of Italy's fragile government.
Kazakhstan said on Saturday the wife of fugitive former minister and oligarch Mukhtar Ablyazov could not leave the country because she was under investigation, and Ablyazov said his wife and daughter were in danger
