Berlusconi, the Letta cabinet and the Kazakh people

Saturday, 6 July 2013. According to local newspaper L'Unione Sarda, Silvio Berlusconi secretly met up with with Kazakh dictator Nursultan Nazarbayev in Pultaldìa (Sardinia), on the very day when the Italian government come under fire for the deportation of wife and daughter of a Kazakh dissident. Later Mr Berlusconi will officially deny it.

Silvio Berlusconi with Nursultan Nazarbayev: did they secretly meet in Sardinia?

A storm hit the Letta government, as it came to light that the wife and the six-year-old daughter of a Kazakh dissident, Mukhtar Ablyazov, had been deported illegally to Kazakhstan, because it was believed that their documents were fake, in the end of May.

Later findings that the charges weren't justified (the procedure was annulled consequentially) and that Enrico Letta's office have tried for weeks to keep the case under wraps didn't help at all.

The two Kazakh females were seized by Italian special forces (the General Investigations and Special Operations Division, in Italian: Divisione Investigazioni Generali e Operazioni Speciali, commonly known by its acronym DIGOS).

One of the documents of Alma Shalabayeva

About 40 armed agents in civil clothes broke into the family villa in Casal Palocco (Rome), on request from the Kazakh ambassador in Italy. Actually it was the Minister of the Interior and secretary of Mr Berlusconi's PdL (People of Liberty) party, Angelino Alfano, who introduced the ambassador Adrian Yelemessov to prefect Giuseppe Procaccini who in turn informed the Department of Public Safety about the presence of a “dangerous fugitive from justice” in the villa in Casal Palocco.

Unaware Minister of the Interior Angelino Alfano

Procaccini resigned on 16 July, as the whole story became public. And – you should now – Italians do not resign that easily.

Kazakh dissident Mukhtar Ablyazov's wife Alma Shalabayeva – who was arrested together with her 6-year-old daughter Alua – also said the was insulted and abused by Italian police.

The police (namely the DIGOS) deny any wrongdoing.

Now, on top of this egregious quid pro quo of the Italian officials and government (nobody knew about the events, nor the Ministry of the Interior nor the Ministry of Foreign Affairs), Sardinia's local newspaper L'Unione Sarda claimed that Silvio Berlusconi secretly met up with Kazakhstan's president – and, to some observers, dictator - Nursultan Nazarbayev on the beautiful island, where the Kazakh politician spent a short vacation.

Silvio Berlusconi denies it. As usual. The truth is not likely to come to light. A question still waits for an answer: if Alma Shalabayeva would have been.... let's say a 16-year-old belly dancer, perhaps some of the Italian politician might have been more helpful at all?