WARSAW — A decade ago, Rakhat Aliyev was one of the most powerful and feared men in Kazakhstan, the son-in-law of the country’s authoritarian leader with a raft of important government posts, a private security force and a network of lucrative businesses and shady connections.
Tuesday morning, he was found hanging from a coat hook in the bathroom of his solitary prison cell in Vienna, accused of murder, abandoned by his wife, isolated after years on the run and estranged from President Nursultan Nazarbayev, the powerful father-in-law who had declared him a traitor.
Officials at the Vienna prison where Mr. Aliyev, 52, had been held since June, awaiting trial in the kidnapping and murder of two Kazakh bank officials, said they were convinced he had committed suicide.
Peter Prechtl, the warden at Josefstadt prison, said that no one could have gotten into the cell without a key, that video cameras showed no suspicious activity and that no one had heard any noise, the Austria Press Agency reported.
“For us, it was clearly suicide,” Mr. Prechtl said.
But Mr. Aliyev’s lawyers are not convinced and are calling for a full investigation. “I visited him yesterday,” said Klaus Ainedter, one of his lawyers. “There was no indication of any suicide threat.”
Mr. Aliyev was not considered a suicide risk by prison officials, who had put him on the prison’s green list, which meant he was trusted to be alone in a cell without monitoring.
To add to the mystery, Mr. Aliyev had been scheduled to testify in a trial against two former cellmates whom he had accused of threatening to kill him and make it look like a suicide unless he paid them.
Mr. Aliyev had been moved to the solitary cell, near the prison’s hospital, at his own request after alleging the threats.
Mr. Aliyev was a trained surgeon when he married Dariga Nazarbayeva, the daughter of Mr. Nazarbayev, the strongman who has led Kazakhstan since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Beginning with investments in agricultural commodities, Mr. Aliyev used his political connections and a growing reputation for ruthlessness to expand into newspapers, telecommunications and banking. He was also appointed by his father-in-law to several top government posts, including deputy chief of the security service, first vice foreign minister, head of the country’s tax police and ambassador to Austria.
Accusations regularly swirled around him, though. He was accused of torturing two men he suspected of plotting a coup. Another man claimed he had been kidnapped and held in Mr. Aliyev’s basement in an extortion scheme. Mr. Aliyev roared in a fleet of black vehicles around Almaty, Kazakhstan’s largest city, surrounded by a menacing security detail.
Mr. Aliyev’s fortunes shifted abruptly in 2007. He was appointed to a second term as ambassador to Austria in February, shortly after an investigation was begun into the kidnapping and disappearance of two bank officials, in which he was a suspect.
In May of that year, Mr. Nazarbayev altered Kazakhstan’s Constitution to allow him to become president for life. Mr. Aliyev was among those who raised their voices in dissent.
Before the month was out, Mr. Aliyev had been stripped of all government posts, and his diplomatic immunity had been revoked. The next month, his marriage to Mr. Nazarbayev’s daughter was ended.
Kazakhstan officially requested Mr. Aliyev’s extradition from Austria to face several charges, which he declared to be politically motivated, but Austria refused on human rights grounds.
He then married one of his employees, who had an Austrian passport, and changed his surname to hers. The two fled to Malta, one step ahead of an Interpol warrant. While there, he was investigated repeatedly by several European countries on suspicion of money laundering.
In 2008, a Kazakh court sentenced him in absentia to 40 years in prison for, among other things, plotting to overthrow the government. He was charged with killing an opposition leader in 2006. He was also convicted, again in absentia, of the murder of the two bankers.
He tried unsuccessfully to get Cypriot citizenship, and with his assets seized, his Austrian passport revoked and his options running out, he surrendered to the Austrian authorities last June and was sent to Josefstadt prison.
In December, after an investigation by the Austrian authorities, he was officially charged with kidnapping and murder and was due to face trial later this year in Vienna.
The news that Mr. Aliyev appeared to have committed suicide was greeted with some skepticism. But Vienna prison officials insisted that all indications were that he had used bandages from the nearby hospital to hang himself.
“Suicides do happen in prisons,” Mr. Prechtl said, according to the Austria Press Agency, “as much as we try to prevent them.”
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