Two men who claimed to have been tortured and framed by Kazakh millionaire Rakhat Aliyev, who is self-exiled in Malta, have filed a fresh complaint asking Maltese police to investigate their allegations against him.
"Aliyev is trying to create the impression that he is a democrat and an opponent of dictatorship. This is a ridiculous falsehood. For as long as he was able, he remained one of the most vicious butchers of democracy in Kazakhstan," the men told The Sunday Times of Malta. Pyotr Afanasenko and Satzhan Ibraev, two former bodyguards of Kazakh Prime Minister Akezhan Kazhegeldin, have been unsuccessfully pursuing Mr Aliyev for years in Austria and now in Malta – where he moved in 2010 – making the case that he had personally had them arrested and tortured in a bid to extract a false statement against their former boss. At the time of this alleged incident, which took place in the late 1990s, Mr Aliyev was the son-in-law of Kazakhstan's authoritarian President Nursultan Nazarbayev and acted as deputy chief of the country's secret service. He eventually fell out with Nazarbayev and fled Kazakhstan, claiming threats to his life after he declared himself a candidate for the...
