An American academic organised an online campaign and protests on the streets of London to try “to bring . . . to justice” the former head of the Kazakhstan secret service and his associates, a British court will hear.
John Waller, a specialist in “unconventional conflict”, was paid $20,000 a month to mount a campaign accusing the former KNB officer Rakhat Aliyev and his billionaire brother-in-law Issam Hourani of being complicit in the alleged murder of a young Russian journalist, Anastasiya Novikova. Hourani says he was “not responsible in any way” for Ms Novikova’s death, adding that the accusations against him “are part of a wider international campaign to abuse and totally discredit me.”
In a case due to start on Monday at London’s High Court, Hourani is accusing Waller – and three other US residents – of defamation and harassment for their part in organising the campaign. Hourani is also applying to the court to order Waller to disclose the identity of the client who paid for the campaign.
A judgment in the case, released last week but unreported until now, dealt with the application to disclose the identity of the client. It said: “It is the claimant’s belief that the campaign for which the defendants, in particular [Waller], are responsible is part of a campaign launched against the claimant and his family by or through the Government of Kazakhstan. The claimant attributes the commencement and pursuit of that campaign to a political falling out in 2007 between the claimant’s brother-in-law, the late Rakhat Aliyev, and President Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan.”
The court has ruled that the question of disclosing the client’s identity should be decided during the main trial next week.
While Waller and his co-defendants have admitted responsibility for organising the online campaigns and protests on the streets of London, they claim this was done in the public interest.
In his witness statement, reproduced in the judgment handed down last week, Waller said he believed that Aliyez and Hourani were involved in the death of Ms Novikova:
He said “From my review and analysis of documents and various searches I had undertaken, and given the conclusions I had reached, I took the view that the campaign should centre on the death of Ms Novikova and the need to bring the perpetrators to justice. It was clear to me that Ms Novikova had been murdered and that Aliyev and the Claimant were involved.”
Ms Novikova died in June 2004 after falling from an apartment in Beirut. Legal filings allege that Ms Novikova was Aliyev’s mistress and that she had been raped and tortured in a specially created “torture room” in the apartment prior to her death for supposedly being unfaithful to him.
Her alleged murder was then covered up, according to the legal filings, and her body was spirited out of Lebanon on a private jet to be buried in a deserted cemetery in Kazakhstan.
A central part of the allegation against Hourani relates to the ownership of the apartment from which Ms Novikova fell to her death. According to legal papers, the apartment building was owned by the multi-billion dollar construction group Consolidated Contractors Company – itself currently involved in protracted litigation in London’s High Court over the ownership of the company – with the apartment owned by Hourani or his brother Devinci.
While Hourani admits the apartment where Ms Novikova lived and where she fell to her death was owned by his family, he said that he did not own it. He also denies any involvement in the death of Ms Novikova, saying that he was not in Lebanon when she died.
The defendants in the case being brought by Hourani are: Allison Blair, John Waller, Alistair Thomson and Bryan McCarthy. They have not commented.