Europe seems to be sliding downwards rapidly. The fact that Vladimir Putin has murdered his critics in the heart of London is not an isolated event. Now, we witness how the dictator of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev, forces the Italian Interior Minister, the Justice Minister, the Foreign Minister, and the head of special police forces to violate all relevant laws and due process, summarily abducting and deporting relatives of his critics from Rome. This event, in the capital of a European country, should be a monumental scandal, right?
Let me provide some context. Despite the indefensible whitewashing by Tony Blair and others, Nursultan Nazarbayev is a true dictator, no doubt about it. He has imposed his rule in Kazakhstan since 1991 and controls the country as his personal fiefdom. Kazakhstan has yet to witness its first free, fair, and democratic elections. Human, civil, and political rights are virtually non-existent. Yet, many Western nations, corporations, and former political leaders are doing phenomenal business with Nazarbayev, who is “absolutely loved by his country,” according to Silvio “bunga-bunga” Berlusconi. Nazarbayev’s connivance has allowed, in pure Russian style, the emergence of an oligarchy: a handful of relatives, appointees, confidants, and collaborators have become obscenely wealthy over the years. Among them are Timur Kulibayev, Vladimir Kim, Alidzhan Ibragimov, Bolat Utemuratov, Rashid Sarsenov, Rakhat Aliyev… all of whom owe their ill-gotten fortunes directly to the khan. And then, there’s Mukhtar Ablyazov, a trusted minister of Nazarbayev, accused of embezzling billions from Kazakhstan’s BTA Bank.
However, Ablyazov, like other “entrepreneurs” from Kazakhstan, fell out of favor with Nazarbayev for any number of reasons and fled to the United Kingdom, where he sought political asylum. Frankly, I have no sympathy for “businessmen” who go from selling goods at market stalls to billionaires in a few years. It’s impossible to amass fortunes of the magnitude some of these oligarchs have without the complicity or association of thoroughly corrupt government officials who grant them control of valuable state assets in exchange for a penny, or worse yet, on credit. So, whatever happens with Ablyazov, who foolishly fled the country that had risks for him, isn’t really important.
What happened to his wife and 6-year-old daughter in Italy, however, is a completely different matter. His wife, Alma Shalabayeva, was living in Rome. Legally, with a Schengen permit obtained as a citizen of Kazakhstan. The same goes for the 6-year-old daughter, Alua Ablyazova. Yet, this didn’t prevent 50 heavily armed DIGOS agents (Italian special forces) from storming the house where she was staying shortly after midnight on Wednesday the 29th. She was detained without a judicial order. What was her crime? Well, here’s where things get interesting.
Shalabayeva’s lawyer, Riccardo Olivo, claims she committed no crime in Italy, was not wanted in relation to any crime in Italy, and there was no international warrant against her. Shalabayeva was arrested for being in Italy with a fake passport from the Central African Republic. That was supposedly her “crime.” But her lawyer insists that officials from the Central African embassy confirmed the passport was legitimate. Thus, the 50 Italian special forces agents, rather than regular immigration police or customs, took Shalabayeva to the Centro di Identificazione ed Espulsione—Centre for Identification and Deportation—based on a deportation order. From there, she was to be immediately deported to Kazakhstan, where she had not committed any crime either.
A process this fast and efficient, especially in Italy, is completely abnormal. It is estimated that there are 440,000 illegal immigrants in Italy. How many of them are targeted by DIGOS sting operations? Why were Ablyazov’s wife and daughter singled out? Additionally, how many of the “7,944 irregular immigrants detained in 2012” were arrested by DIGOS and had private jets waiting for them at Ciampino Airport? But in Italy, those involved in sending Ablyazov’s wife back to Nazarbayev overlooked the daughter, and the law prohibits the deportation of a mother without her child. So, they were sent back, by their Kazakh controllers, to the villa where they had taken Shalabayeva, to arrest her 6-year-old daughter, who, once reunited with her mother on the plane, was sent to the current Genghis Khan two days later, on Friday.
“MACCHINA INFERNALE,” also known as extraordinary rendition
This is how lawyer Olivo describes the indefinite operation:
“I personally intervened – the lawyer continues – at the highest levels of the Prosecutor’s Office in Rome to inform them. Prosecutor Eugenio Albamonte and deputy prosecutor Nello Rossi, also through the intervention of Chief Prosecutor Pignatone, managed to block this infernal machine. But then something must have happened; the pressure was too much and the infernal machine resumed its course. At 18:30, mother and daughter were taking off from Ciampino heading to their country. Formally, everything was likely done within the rules. Substantively, they handed a woman into the hands of her husband’s executioner. And it’s a chilling, extraordinarily grave thing.”
Olivo claims to have contacted the relevant authorities from the Prosecutor’s Office in Rome (Prosecutor Eugenio Albamonte, Deputy Prosecutor Nello Rossi, and Chief Prosecutor Pignatone), who were able to block the “MACCHINA INFERNALE,” also known as extraordinary rendition, but pressure from above (? ) prevailed, so mother and daughter were sent back to Kazakhstan, in clear violation of current Italian immigration law, which states that nobody can be deported to a country where they may be subjected to persecution, human rights violations, etc.
Performance aircraft owned by Avcon Jet AG of Austria
Olivo raises important questions like: “Who owned the plane? Who chartered it and paid for it?” The plane (OE-HOO) used for this extraordinary rendition belongs to Avcon Jet, an Austrian company that has former Austrian Finance Minister Andreas Staribacher on its board. The true owners of Avcon seem to have made an extra effort to conceal the identities of their majority shareholders behind undefined powers. Austrian press reports vaguely state that “Borat agents” are behind this cloak-and-dagger operation, which ended with Ablyazov’s wife and daughter under house arrest in Kazakhstan. In fact, this isn’t a laughing matter, as Kazakhstan’s KNB intelligence agents can operate freely in Italy and Austria, where their European intelligence command center seems based, and all the Italian authorities involved effectively act as undercover operations for Nazarbayev.
In light of all this, it’s worth asking: who benefits where? ENI undefined, the Italian energy conglomerate in which the Italian state has a 30% stake, has no small amount of business with Nazarbayev. In fact, ENI appears quite comfortable dealing with Kazakh bullies, paying bribes to Nazarbayev’s son-in-law for concessions. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to suggest that sending Ablyazov’s family back as a kind of revenge is not out of the question, right? But what about due process in Italy? What about its degraded and corrupt ministers and special forces? How can communist dictator thugs and their intelligence services operate so blatantly? How can Italian officials violate current laws, pursue and endanger innocent people and children with such impunity?