Rakhat Aliyev found dead in jail cell

    Rakhat Aliyev, a former son-in-law of Nursultan Nazarbayev who became an opponent of the long-ruling Kazakh president, has been found dead in a Vienna jail in what Austrian officials said was a suicide.
    Aliyev's lawyer voiced doubt that he killed himself and called for a "very thorough" investigation.
    An Austrian court spokeswoman said on February 24 that Aliyev, who was being held on murder charges he dismissed as politically motivated, had "committed suicide."
    The warden of Josefstadt prison, Peter Prechtl, said Aliyev hanged himself with bandages on a coat hook in a single-person cell in the prison's medical unit, where he had been placed at his own request.
    Austrian media quoted Aliyev's lawyer, Klaus Ainedter, as saying that he "seriously doubts" that the 52-year-old killed himself.
    “I visited him yesterday. There was no indication of a suicide risk," Ainedter said.
    "We trust that his death will be investigated very thoroughly and that the cause of death will be established clearly," he told the Austrian APA news agency, adding that he does not want to accuse anyone of any wrongdoing.
    Prison warden Prechtl said that Aliyev "was not seen as suicidal" and was allowed to stay in his cell alone without precautions.
    He said Aliev's cell was checked regularly but that the cell's bathroom was not under surveillance.
    Foreign Ministry spokesman Nurzhan Aitmakhanov said on February 24 that the ministry was checking the reports about Aliyev's death.
    Aliyev was married for many years to Nazarbaev's eldest daughter, Darigha, and served as deputy chief of Kazakhstanís National Security Committee under Nazarbaev, who has led the energy-producing Central Asian state since the Soviet era.
    But Aliyev fled to Austria, where he had served as ambassador, amid an investigation into the abduction and killing of the two Kazakh bankers in 2007.
    Austrian authorities repeatedly refused to extradite Aliyev, citing concerns that he might not face a fair trial in Kazakhstan, but opened their own investigation in 2011 and charged him with the murders in December 2014.
    Aliyev had been in Austrian custody since June, when he turned himself in to authorities.
    In 2008, a Kazakh court sentenced him in absentia to 40 years in prison after convicting him of plotting to overthrow the government and organizing a criminal group that abducted people.
    In 2013, Kazakh authorities named Aliyev as a suspect in ordering the murder of opposition leader Altynbek Sarsenbaiuly and two associates.
    Sarsenbaiuly, a prominent opposition politician who had been ambassador to Russia, information minister, and Kazakh Security Council chairman, was shot dead execution-style near Almaty in 2006.
    In 2007, after he fled to Austria, Aliyev told RFE/RL that he had received by fax a Kazakh court ruling annulling his marriage to Darigha Nazarbayeva, with whom he had two sons and a daughter.
    As reports of Aliyev's death made headlines in Kazakhstan on February 24, his ex-wife, a lawmaker, was chairing parliamentary discussions on the state budget for 2015-17.
    When an RFE/RL correspondent asked Nazarbayeva in the parliament building about the news of her ex-husband's death, she ignored the question and walked away.
    Aliyev's father, Mukhtar Aliyev, died in Almaty last month at the age of 81.
    Mukhtar Aliyev left for Europe in 2007, shortly after his son fled Kazakhstan. He returned unexpectedly to Kazakhstan in 2009, saying he needed to help his wife, whom he described as being "under house arrest,” according to RFE/RL.