Alma Shalabayeva in Poland
Alma Shalabayeva, the wife of the Kazakh dissident Mukhtar Ablyazov, met with Polish MPs and representatives of the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Czech Embassy and the Open Dialog Foundation in Warsaw.
On the 25th February, during her one-day visit to Poland’s capital, Alma Shalabayeva had a chance to speak with, amongst others, the Polish MPs Marcin Święcicki (Civic Platform, Platforma Obywatelska, PO) and Tomasz Makowski (Your Move, Twój Ruch).
Shalabayeva brought closer to her interlocutors the figure of Mukhtar Ablyazov, who, for more than half a year now, has been detained in France for the purpose of extradition, and on the 9th January 2014 the court complied with the request to release him to Russia and Ukraine. She was talking about the persecutions by the Kazakh authorities, inflicted upon her family in recent years: about an attempted abduction of their son; the imprisonment and torture of Mukhtar Ablyazov, and the inhuman conditions he encountered in prison. She was also speaking about the killing in Kazakhstan of political opponents to Nursultan Nazarbayev, and about the “hunt”, by the authorities in Astana, for people associated with Ablyazov, which is going on throughout Europe.
“For a number of years, my husband supported and financed opposition activities and independent media in Kazakhstan. For this, Nazarbayev wants to destroy him, his family and everyone who supports him,” emphasised Alma Shalabayeva.
The dissident’s wife also described how she had been deported, together with her daughter, in mid-2013, from Italy to Kazakhstan, and what had awaited her back in the country: surveillance, invasive trailing and pursuance, and tapping of her conversations. She also explained that following intervention from Italian politicians and journalists, she managed, in December 2013, to leave Kazakhstan and return to Italy.
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