Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/884700
maltatoday, SUNDAY, 8 OCTOBER 2017 9 fundamental rights. It also brought to an immediate stop "all assis- tance that the Maltese authori- ties have been requested to give against Rakhat Aliyev" but permit- ted them to continue to give assis- tance and send documentation to Kazakhstan related to the investi- gation into Shorazova, who is to be treated as a person accused at law. Extradition requests had been turned down by other nations, but these refusals did not appear to ex- tend to requests for assistance in investigations, said the court. The court observed that this was not an extradition request and there had been no request for the woman's return to Kazakhstan, where "it is alleged, torture is prac- tised... Here we have a case where the applicant is being accused of a number of serious and grave crimes and this court does not see the need to disrupt the investiga- tion that is underway by refraining from sending certain information to the competent authorities of that country." Kazakhstan not being a signa- tory to the European Convention on Human Rights, did not mean that everything that happened in that country was wrong or that all criminal investiga- tions were manip- ulated, said the court. The court said it did not feel it should pass judgment on the state of democ- racy in Kazakhstan as it was "not that rel- evant to the merits of this case." While accepting that the Central Asian state had been censured over its human rights record by nearly all interested international organisations, "the fact remained that the request was one for information relating to an investigation which had not been sufficiently proven to be politically motivated. Malta was not being asked to extradite a person, but only to provide assistance as laid out in a convention to which both countries are signatories," ruled the judge. News He was once the husband of Kazakh dictator Nursultan Nazarbayev's daughter. In power, Aliyev was a multi-millionaire who controlled industry and also served as deputy director of the Kazakh secret service. But after the Nurbank murders, he was forcibly divorced and sentenced to prison. The persecutor became the persecuted. In Malta, he fled from his Viennese home with his new wife and acquired several properties, first at Fort Cambridge, then in the reclusive High Ride area. His 'persecutors' were many. In Vienna, the prosecutor there started her own investigation into the Nurbank murders. The former East German prime minister, Lothar de Maizière, demanded that Aliyev be prosecuted in Malta for the torture of two bodyguards. The Kazakhs, whom Aliyev claimed were spying on him in Malta, financed a legal effort to cripple him financially. Aliyev lived in fear of his safety, securing a friendly interview with The Times of Malta where he claimed he was being persecuted by the Kazakhs. But critics said he had secured permanent residence without the due scrutiny that was necessary. In 2013, his wife Elnara Shorazova filed a police report against lawyer Pio Valletta, accusing him of misappropriating €2.4 million during a relocation of assets to Malta. He has since been acquitted. A year later, the Maltese courts approved a general freezing order on all of Aliyev's assets on the island. German lawyers DSRB, acting on behalf of the Kazakh ministry of justice, filed its own report to the Maltese Attorney General, claiming Aliyev had shifted €100 million in alleged criminal gains during his time as deputy head of the Kazakh secret service, to Malta. After failing to obtain Cypriot citizenship, Aliyev decided to hand himself over to Austrian prosecutors for his own safety, but died in 2015 in prison. An Austrian court ruled his death as suicide by hanging. His lawyer and family insist that he was murdered. Dissident's widow bid to stop assisting Kazakhs HUNTER WHO BECAME HUNTED "I had a friend… who had an eating disorder, but because he was a man, he felt he could not admit it," former bulimia sufferer Miriana Testafer- rata di Noto (pictured) says. "It took him a very long time to actually believe he had an eating disorder, because for him and for a lot of people, these eating disorders are only women's issues." Testaferrata di Noto, who faced both bulimia and ano- rexia when she was 16 years old, recalled times when her friends were too afraid to ad- mit they faced eating disorders because of the stigma sur- rounding the issue. She said that the general perception of bulimia and anorexia is that people with eating disorders have to be underweight: "I know people who had an eating disorder but were never underweight… who thought they weren't sick enough to have an eating dis- order". Bulimia is an eating disorder often characterised by periods of binging, or excessive over- eating, followed by purging. Sufferers of bulimia often have a fear of gaining weight. Being underweight may be a consequence of an eating disorder, and not an indica- tor of it, she continued. "You need to be careful about how you speak, because you never know what the person around you is going through." "People treat [mental health issues] as if they are a taboo, when in reality they are very treatable," she said. Stigma surrounding mental health can affect long-standing relationships, continued Te- staferrata di Noto, saying that despite more awareness about bulimia and anorexia, people "start looking at you from a different light when they find out about the disorder". "Even if people understand what a disorder is, they don't know how to deal with the sit- uation once they find out," she said. "It's the only thing people think about you sometimes: look at her, she had a mental illness." Despite the stigma surround- ing mental health, Testafer- rata di Noto encourages those who feel the same to reach out to others, arguing "when you reach out to people, you start to feel more open to recovery." Testaferrata di Noto spoke candidly about her battle with both bulimia and anorexia: "When I was 16, there was a point where I believed I would never get out of it. There was a time where I had to throw up after every meal, because my body was so used to throwing up that I couldn't even keep a glass of water down." Testaferrata di Noto started dieting when she was 15, dur- ing her transition from second- ary to post-secondary school. "I said to myself I want to be a different person, and for me, that meant losing weight." She eventually went down to ingesting just 300 calories per day. Her decision to come for- ward came after experiencing the benefits of others speaking about their mental health is- sues first-hand: "At any point during recovery, I used to watch [videos of people who managed to overcome eat- ing disorders] and that's what made me want recovery. And I said if I ever manage to get through this, I want to help others, even if I manage to help one person because I know… how much listening to people helped." Media awareness can help remove stigma and educate others on mental illnesses, she continued. "If I had heard about [bulimia and anorexia] before, there's a chance I would have done something about it before it became severe. I had to look up the symptoms of it online." Awareness would help suf- ferers to come to terms with their eating disorder, Testafer- rata di Noto argued. "It's quite difficult to admit it to yourself. I knew it deep down inside but I wasn't ready to admit it even to myself… You're going to get through it no matter what. And you're going to be a lot stronger than you ever were before." Dar Kenn Ghal Sahhtek is a facility for the treatment of patients with eating disorders and weight problems. Set up in 2014, the establishment provides an alternative to the prolonged stay in other facilities such as Mount Carmel. Treatment is free of charge and residents are able to stay at the facility for up to five months. If you feel the need to reach out to others on eating disorders, you can contact Dar Kenn Ghal Sahhtek here or on their number 2145 3690. 'Bulimia is a stigma that also hits men'