Kazakh pair go on trial in Austria charged with bankers' murders

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/14/kazakhstan-intelligence-head-bodyguard-trial-austria-bankers-murders-rakhat-aliyev

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Kazakhstan’s former head of intelligence has gone on trial in Austria alongside a former bodyguard in the latest instalment of a tale of complex power struggles inside the autocratic, gas-rich central Asian state.

Astana accuses the two men, Alnur Mussayev and Vadim Koshlyak – whose trial began on Tuesday – of the kidnap and murderof two bank executives in Kazakhstan in 2007.

The main suspect, Rakhat Aliyev, 52, who was married to the daughter of the Kazakh president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, before falling out with him, was found hanged in his Austrian prison cell on 24 February.

Austrian authorities said his death was suicide, but his lawyers claimed that he was murdered. Results from a second autopsy and a toxicology test are still outstanding.

Austria refused to extradite the three men, deciding instead to try them in Vienna. More than 60 witnesses are expected to testify over the next 26 days, most of them flying in from Kazakhstan.

The bankers’ bodies were found buried underneath a rubbish dump in metal barrels filled with lime in 2011. The Kazakh authorities claim the suspects wanted them to sign over their shares in a local bank.