Lawyers wanted courts to force police to investigate former Kazakh diplomat exiled in Malta over torture and human rights abuses.
Magistrate Antonio Mizzi threw out the request of Maltese and German lawyers to force the Commissioner of Police to investigate multimillionaire, former Kazakh diplomat Rakhat Aliyev, over allegations of torture and crimes against humanity when he was deputy chief of Kazakhstan's secret service in 2000.
The police had repeatedly rejected the lawyers' pleas and in July 2012 informed them that the allegations lacked the legal elements that constitute a crime against humanity as detailed by the Maltese Criminal Code.
Lawyers Lothar de Maizière - East Germany's first and last democraticallyelected prime minister at the fall of the Berlin Wall - and Malcolm Mifsud had filed an official police challenge in court, calling upon Magistrate Antonio Mizzi to instruct then Commissioner of Police John Rizzo to immediately commence investigations into the allegations that Aliyev had tortured bodyguards Satzhan Ibraev and Pyotr Afanasenko, in an alleged vindication against Kazakh prime minister Akezhan Kazhegeldin.
The complainants will be appealing within the decision within the seven day-statutory period. "They do not agree with the conclusions of the magistrate, however they do agree with the conclusion that the court would have jurisdiction over crimes against humanity," sources close to the complainants told MaltaToday.
In 1997 Kazhegeldin had stepped down as prime minister with the intention of challenging Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev for the presidency.
He also claimed that Aliyev as deputy chief of the National Security
Chris Mangion, Maltatoday
