Translated material
Blood from Vienna
An attempt was made on the life of the former chief security officer of Kazakhstan
In Vienna, the former chairman of the National Security Committee of Kazakhstan, Alnur Musaev, and his companion were attacked. This was reported yesterday by RIA Novosti with reference to the official representative of the Austrian prosecutor's office, Gerhard Jarosz, who added that on September 24, Alnur Musaev himself turned to the police. “I don’t have any other information today,” said Gerhard Jarosz, noting that details may appear by September 26.Alnur Musaev was sentenced in absentia in Kazakhstan to 20 years in prison in the same case as his former subordinate, ex-deputy chairman of the National Security Committee Rakhat Aliyev. This man is known much better than Musaev. The former eldest son-in-law of Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev, who was divorced in absentia last year from the president's eldest daughter Dariga Nazarbayeva, Rakhat Aliyev was also at various times Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs and then Ambassador of Kazakhstan to Austria and part-time at the OSCE headquarters in Vienna .
Rakhat Aliyev was twice sentenced by the court to 20 years in prison, for a total of 40 years. He was accused of racketeering, murder, kidnapping and preparing for a coup in Kazakhstan. Since last year, Rakhat Aliyev and Alnur Musayev have been hiding in Austria, whose authorities have so far refused the request of the Kazakh law enforcement agencies to extradite Aliyev and Musayev.
According to the first reports from anonymous sources that appeared yesterday, an attempt was made on both former high-ranking fugitives. However, then the Vremya Novostei newspaper received different information from the chairman of the opposition Kazakh party Ata-Meken, Yerzhan Dosmukhamedov, who is in exile in London. According to Mr. Dosmukhamedov, a few days ago, presumably on September 22, unknown persons in Vienna attacked a car in which only Alnur Musaev and his companion, a certain 30-year-old Austrian citizen Lida Aikmayer, were located. This woman, having come to her senses after a serious operation performed in a Vienna hospital, said: someone shot her at close range in the face, but she miraculously survived only because she was somehow blocked by “the man who accompanied her to work and sat next to her in the passenger seat” Alnur Musaev. According to Yerzhan Dosmukhamedov, Musaev himself was also wounded and is in the hospital. Consequently, Rakhat Aliyev was not among those who were attacked.
However, this incident raises many questions. For example, why, as a representative of the Austrian prosecutor's office claims, did the victim Musaev not immediately contact the police after the attack? Why does this representative, Gerhard Jarosz, not provide details of when exactly the attack was committed, and in what condition the victims are? Kazakh oppositionist Erzhan Dosmukhamedov sees the reason that the Austrian authorities now find themselves in a very delicate position. The fact is that next week Austrian President Heinz Fischer is going to visit Astana. And if it is confirmed that representatives of Kazakhstan were involved in the attack on Alnur Musaev, who received asylum in Austria and was recognized as a state criminal in Kazakhstan, then this, according to Mr. Dosmukhamedov, should lead to the cancellation of the visit. Meanwhile, the oppositionist claims, well-known American journalists from the Wall Street Journal newspaper received information from Rakhat Aliyev’s lawyers that the Austrian police had already detained two people suspected of attacking Musaev and his companion. And both of them are allegedly related to the Kazakh embassy in Vienna, and one of them was injured.
On the other hand, informed observers in Astana, who are well aware of the professional “handwriting” of Rakhat Aliyev, told Vremya Novostey that this whole story with the “attempt” is similar to a provocation staged by a former Kazakh security officer in order to attract attention, and most importantly - - disrupt the visit of the President of Austria to Kazakhstan and prevent the achievement of agreements between the Kazakh and Austrian authorities on the extradition of Aliyev and Musayev to their homeland.