Who needs horror movies when life is full of real horror stories?

Anastasiya’s Story

Anastasiya and her baby daughter Luiza, before Luiza was kidnapped from her mother in early 2004. This is the last known photo of Anastasiya Novikova while she was alive.

Anastasiya Novikova, born of Russian parents in 1980, was a hopeful young woman who moved from her native Uzbekistan to attend school and find opportunities in Kazakhstan, Central Asia.

With her long blond hair and cheerful features, Anastasiya landed a dream job as a news reader for one of Kazakhstan’s major television channels, NTK.

There, the attractive young woman came to the attention of NTK’s owner, billionaire Rakhat Aliyev.

Nearly twenty years her senior and with unparalleled political connections, Aliyev promised to liberate Anastasiya from obscurity and help her see the world. He brought her with him to Vienna, Austria, where he would serve twice as ambassador.

Forced to marry a cousin to conceal her pregnancy

But Aliyev was married to the daughter of the President of Kazakhstan. He couldn’t make his affair public.

After he impregnated Anastasiya, he forced her to marry his cousin, a subordinate in Kazakhstan’s diplomatic service named Daniyar Esten. Esten would pretend that the baby was his.

As Anastasiya became more visibly pregnant in Vienna, Aliyev knew she would become a problem. He had to get her out of Austria and out of sight. That meant sending her to a place where she could disappear while he continued his sexual relations with her.

Captivity in Beirut

Thanks to shady connections in Beirut, Aliyev arranged for Anastasiya and her “husband” to move there and live with a senior Kazakhstani diplomat for eight months. Aliyev’s sister lived in Beirut, married to a Lebanese Kazakh who, as his brother-in-law, gave Aliyev and his enforcers a local Arabic-speaking support network. Aliyev’s brother-in-law was Issam Salah Hourani.

Anastasiya was captive in the Lebanese capital. She had no money. No way to travel on her own. She was completely cut off from her family and friends.

Her baby daughter, Luiza, was born at that time. As the pictures show, Anastasiya found comfort in her new baby girl – and with a local man who took an interest in her. To punish Anastasiya for “cheating” on him, Aliyev had Luiza taken away.

Brutalized in the Houranis’ apartment

Anastasiya was transferred to an apartment owned by Aliyev’s Lebanese brother-in-law, Issam Salah Hourani, and Hourani’s brother, Devincci. Issam Hourani’s sister had been with Anastasiya during Luiza’s birth. Now, Aliyev instructed the sister to be responsible for baby Luiza, and raise her as a member of the Aliyev family. Esten lived with her, but forbade her to venture outside alone. A special lock on the front required a key to enter or exit. Anastasiya was a prisoner.

Anastasiya Novikova’s tragic story played out to the end in that apartment.

How She Was Murdered

Anastasiya Novikova and her baby daughter Luiza, in Beirut, September 2003. Anastasiya sent this photo to members of her family.

In the spring of 2004, as further punishment for “cheating” on him after taking away her baby, witnesses say, Rakhat Aliyev severely beat Anastasiya in the Beirut apartment owned by the Houranis.

Witnesses have testified that Aliyev had Anastasiya’s wrists tied to hooks mounted to the walls, and used ropes as a form of crucifixion. Witnesses say he whipped her, broke her ribs, left bruises all over her body, and raped her. Sometimes Anastasiya was handcuffed to brackets attached to the walls.

With her “husband” Esten’s acquiescence, a mattress was placed against the bedroom window and secured with duct tape to muffle the sounds from inside, and to block out the light from outside.

Drugged and abused

To keep her quiet, Aliyev injected Anastasiya with ketonal, also known as Ketoprofen, a painkiller for humans if administered in pill form, but intended for horses if administered as an injection. He instructed an underling in how to inject Anastasiya daily.

Anastasiya pleaded to be reunited with her little girl. Another Aliyev subordinate at the Kazakhstan Embassy in Beirut finally coordinated the visits through Aliyev’s brother-in-law, Issam Hourani, an owner of the apartment whose sister reportedly was raising the child.

While Anastasiya was able to see her baby again, her very presence became an increasing problem. Aliyev ordered a subordinate to give her a different drug, this time in tablet form. Her “husband” Esten administered them as well. The tablets made Anastasiya drowsy and passive. Soon the pills made her physically ill – but she was becoming addicted and craved them.

The subordinate says he told Aliyev about her worsening condition, but Aliyev ordered him to give her more, and later, after she was addicted, to cut her off.

Aliyev had once told an associate that he wanted her to take a medication that would cause her to gain weight, and make her unattractive.

The Beirut apartment building where Anastasiya was held captive and hurled to her death. This photo is from the Lebanese authorities’ 2004 report.

‘Biggest problem’

Later that spring, when Anastasiya ventured outside on her own, Esten locked her up again in the apartment, this time shackling her in the bedroom.

Witnesses say another Aliyev subordinate shaved off her long, beautiful blond hair as punishment, and left the cuttings on the urine-stained floor as a further insult.

Anastasiya was, according to a witness, the “biggest problem” for Aliyev’s Beirut-based brother-in-law. Something had to be done.

Finally, on June 19, 2004, the terribly abused young mother was hurled from her apartment prison to her death.

Her dead body was found impaled on iron reinforcement rods atop a concrete fence that rose beneath the apartment.

Within three days, with pressure on Lebanese authorities from Aliyev’s subordinates in the Kazakhstan embassy, Anastasiya’s remains were cleared to be flown to Kazakhstan for burial.

The balcony from where Anastasiya was thrown to her death. The apartment was owned by Rakhat Aliyev’s brother-in-law, Issam Hourani, and Issam’s brother, Devincci Hourani. Photo is from Lebanese police investigators.

How did Anastasiya Novikova die?

Medical examiners said Anastasiya’s broken bones were consistent with a 9-story fall, but forensic evidence did not prove she was murdered.  Saying they found no evidence of a struggle, medical examiners ruled her death – tentatively – as a suicide.

A local security guard told authorities that he saw a Russian man with greenish eyes enter the apartment at the time of Anastasiya’s death. The description fit the appearance of the Aliyev subordinate who had shaved her head as punishment, and who later shipped Anastasiya’s body out of the country.

One of Aliyev’s associates in Beirut told authorities that, on hearing the news of Anastasiya’s death, Aliyev had instructed him to tell people that the young woman had drowned in the bathtub.

Esten had a more plausible answer. Anastasiya, he said, suffered from psychological disorders caused by sexual abuse from her childhood, and she killed herself. With Aliyev’s brother-in-law serving as his Arabic-language translator with authorities, Aliyev’s cousin Esten said explicitly that he wanted no criminal investigation into the death of the mother of Aliyev’s child.

Urgency to fly the Anastasiya’s remains from Beirut – without telling her family

But the Lebanese authorities placed Esten under investigation anyway and took his passport.

Apparently at Aliyev’s instruction, the Kazakhstan Embassy in Beirut pressured Lebanese authorities to release Anastasiya’s body soon after it was embalmed for transport, and certified that Esten would cooperate if they would return his passport so he could leave Lebanon with the body for burial in Kazakhstan.

However, Anastasiya Novikova had no family in Kazakhstan. She was not a citizen of Kazakhstan, but of Uzbekistan, where she was born. Nobody – not even her “husband” Esten – informed her parents or brother of her death.

Before the initial five-day investigation of Esten was completed, Esten a boarded the private jet to Kazakhstan chartered by Vadim Koshlyak, the Aliyev aide who had shaved Anastasiya’s head.

With Esten and Koshlyak aboard, the chartered plane flew to a remote part of Kazakhstan’s broad steppe, where Anastasiya’s broken body was hauled overland to a freshly dug grave in an otherwise abandoned cemetery, and secretly buried.

Then Aliyev’s cousin Esten, his aide Koshlyak, and the others left aboard the chartered plane, and nothing more was said.

The following year, in 2005, Esten was killed in a mysterious traffic accident in Austria.

Aliyev become prime suspect

Two years later, Anastasiya’s body was discovered at the remote abandoned cemetery. Kazakhstani authorities identified the remains and notified Anastasiya’s grieving family. Anastasiya’s mother pieced together the evidence and found a lawyer who could help her back in Beirut. She successfully petitioned Lebanese authorities to open a criminal murder investigation into her daughter’s death.

The prime suspect was Rakhat Aliyev.