‘They want to kidnap me or kill me in Malta’

A Kazakh man has claimed his country’s secret service has established a network in Malta with a mission to “kidnap or kill” him. Rakhat Aliyev, once a son-in-law to Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev, told The Sunday Times of Malta he has reliable information that he could be hunted down in the coming days. “My life is in danger. There’s a spying network in Malta and this is dangerous for me, my family and for the Maltese,” Aliyev said in a rare interview. Aliyev said he decided to speak out as a last resort, claiming there were signs that the system in Malta had been infiltrated. He cited as an example the recent leak of a highly confidential court document concerning him to the Kazakh secret service. Aliyev's trouble with the regime started in May 2007 after he strongly objected to his then father-in-law's decision to amend the constitution to become president for life. He was sentenced in absentia to 40 years’ imprisonment for a number of crimes, including the kidnap and torture of two bankers. He vehemently denies all charges and insists it is the Kazakh dictatorship’s method of eliminating dissidents Listen to excerpts of his interview with Herman Grech and Mark Micallef...