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Empresas y finanzas

Kazakh ex-diplomat Aliyev dies in jail suicide - Austrian court


    VIENNA (Reuters) - Rakhat Aliyev, the Kazakh president's former son-in-law turned opponent, has been found dead in an Austrian jail after killing himself, a court spokeswoman said on Tuesday.

    "He committed suicide," the spokeswoman said.

    Austrian prosecutors in December had charged him with the murder of two bankers in 2007, a case in which Kazakhstan has repeatedly requested his extradition.

    Aliyev, a former Kazakh ambassador to Austria who became a vocal critic of President Nursultan Nazarbayev, had denounced the case against him as politically motivated.

    He had been in custody since June when he turned himself in to Austrian authorities.

    The Austria Press Agency quoted a corrections department official as saying Aliyev's body was found at 7:20 a.m. (0620 GMT) in Vienna's Josefstadt prison in a cell where he had been in solitary confinement.

    He had hanged himself in a bathroom, the official added.

    Kazakhstan had attempted to have him extradited from Austria, but Vienna twice refused because of the former Soviet republic's human rights record. Instead it opened its own investigation in 2011.

    (Reporting by Michael Shields; Editing by Jeremy Gaunt)