KEY POINTS:
The former son-in-law of the President of Kazakhstan has escalated a family feud by accusing the head of state, Nursultan Nazerbayev, of ordering the killing of an opposition leader.
Rakhat Aliyev, a former chief of the intelligence service, said he had passed on allegedly incriminating information to police in Austria, from where he said the order to assassinate opposition leader Altynbek Sarsenbayev was given.
"Police are checking that at that time, the President was in Austria. Abykayev was also in Austria for three or four hours," said Aliyev, referring to the Senate Speaker, Nuriat Abykayev. "Those people who are incorporated in the power structure, they follow orders from the President to deal with the opposition, as I did myself."
During an interview in a hotel, whose location cannot be disclosed for security reasons according to his lawyer, Aliyev said Austrian authorities were investigating the Kazakh officials' movements and telephone details. Austrian police and the Interior Ministry would neither confirm nor deny that they had received material from Aliyev.
The saga involving Kazakhstan's first family has been dubbed Borat meets the Borgias. Once the golden boy of the regime with presidential ambitions, Aliyev and his father-in-law had a terminal falling out last May when he was sacked as Ambassador to Austria and ordered to be arrested over the kidnapping of two executives of Nurbank, the bank he controlled. "I'm no angel," Aliyev freely admits, referring to his ruthless reputation back home. But he denies that he is seeking revenge after being forced to divorce his wife, Dariga Nazerbayeva.
Nazerbayev announced in March last year that the head of the Senate administration, Yerzhan Utembayev, had confessed to the murder, but Utembayev, who is serving a 20-year jail sentence, says he was coerced.
