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CRIME

‘Murderer’ ambassador targeted in prison

Former Kazakh Ambassador Rakhat Aliyev is currently in a Viennese prison, awaiting trial for two - or more - murders. His lawyer revealed that the prisoner has been subjected to daily threats of assault, intimidation and extortion.

Published: 1 July 2014 15:43 CEST
'Murderer' ambassador targeted in prison
Photo: APA

According to a report in Der Falter news magazine, Aliyev was moved to a more secure prison cell after being the repeated target of threats and attacks.

Due to suicide risk, Aliyev would not be considered for solitary confinement, but will instead share a cell.

His lawyer Manfred Ainedter had corresponded with the prison governors, complaining about the threats of extortion and theft, with other prisoners allegedly asking for thousands of euros to leave Aliyev unmolested.

The case of the former son-in-law of Kazakhstan's president-for-life, who was also the deputy leader of its intelligence service and owner of a bank which employed the two men he is alleged to have murdered, has occupied the Austrian justice system already since 2007.

Kazakhstan has since sentenced Aliyev to two successive terms of 20 years each, in trials which have been deemed politically motivated by Austrian authorities.  The Austrian government has also denied extradition requests from Kazakhstan for similar reasons.

Aliyev was placed under further investigation directly by Austrian police in 2011 after receiving evidence from the Kazakh government, and arrested him in June when he was visiting from his home in Malta.

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TERRORISM

Austrian investigators seize devices at Munich shooter’s home

Investigators seized electronic devices at the home of a young Austrian who fired shots near Israel's Munich consulate, but found no weapons or Islamic State group propaganda material, authorities said Friday.

Published: 7 September 2024 09:02 CEST
Austrian investigators seize devices at Munich shooter's home

German police shot dead the 18-year-old man on Thursday when he fired a vintage rifle at them near the diplomatic building.

They said they were treating it as a “terrorist attack”, apparently timed to coincide with the anniversary of the killings of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympic Games.

Authorities raided the gunman’s home in the Salzburg region, seizing electronic data carriers, Austria’s top security chief Franz Ruf told a press conference in Vienna on Friday.

READ ALSO: Munich Israeli consulate gunman was ‘Austrian national known to authorities’

During the raid, “no weapons or IS propaganda” material were found, Ruf added.

Despite being subject to a ban on owning and carrying weapons, the man managed to purchase a vintage carbine rifle fitted with a bayonet with around “fifty rounds of ammunition” for 400 euros ($445) the day before the attack, Ruf said.

He opened fire at around 9:00 am (0700 GMT) near the Israeli consulate, sparking a mobilisation of about 500 police in downtown Munich.

At a separate press conference in Munich, prosecutor Gabriele Tilmann said investigators were combing through the gunman’s electronic data but had yet to find conclusive evidence of his motive.

But the “working hypothesis” was that “the perpetrator acted out of Islamist or anti-Semitic motivation”, she told reporters.

Austrian police said on Thursday that the gunman, who had Bosnian roots, had previously been investigated on suspicion of links to terrorism.

Investigators last year found three videos he had recorded in 2021, showing scenes from a computer game “with Islamist content”, prosecutors said in a statement.

In one of them the suspect had used an avatar with a flag of the “al-Nusra Front”, a jihadist group active in Syria, said Ruf.

But the investigation was dropped in 2023 as there were no indications that he was active in “radical” circles, prosecutors said.

“The mere playing of a computer game or the re-enactment of violent Islamist scenes was not sufficient to prove intent to commit the offence,” they added.

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