Italy minister Alfano survives vote

19 July 2013 Last updated at 12:39 GMT Mr Alfano says he was unaware of Kazakh diplomatic pressure Italy's Interior Minister Angelino Alfano has survived a no-confidence vote in the Senate, triggered by a row over the deportation of a Kazakh dissident's family.

The row has threatened the stability of Italy's ruling coalition.

The opposition motion against Mr Alfano was defeated by 226 votes to 55.

There are suspicions that the extradition was carried out as a favour to oil-rich Kazakhstan, which has a poor human rights record.

Just before the vote, Prime Minister Enrico Letta strongly defended Mr Alfano.

He told the Senate that the minister had not been involved in the expulsion of Alma Shalabayeva, wife of dissident banker Mukhtar Ablyazov, and their six-year-old daughter in May.

But Mr Letta acknowledged that the deportation meant "embarrassment and disrepute" for Italy.

Mr Alfano insists he was unaware of Kazakh diplomatic pressure over Mr Ablyazov's family. His chief of staff resigned over the affair this week.

Ms Shalabayeva and her daughter were arrested by police who raided their home in suburban Rome in May and who then put them on a private Kazakh jet which flew them to the Central Asian republic.

UN experts voice concern

The Italian government has ordered an investigation into the case and has revoked the deportation order retroactively.

Mr Letta urged senators to back the minister so the government could carry on its work of addressing Italy's economic problems.

"What I am asking you for is a new vote of confidence in the government which I have the honour to lead," he said.

Mr Letta heads a fragile coalition of centre-left and right-wing parties.

Mr Alfano is an ally of the former conservative Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

UN human rights experts have criticised Italy over the Kazakhstan affair. The dissident's wife and daughter were legally resident in the European Union.

"The circumstances of the deportation give rise to the appearance that this was in fact an extraordinary rendition which is of great concern to us," the UN experts said.

Extraordinary rendition was the name given to the controversial US policy of handing over terror suspects to US-friendly countries where they were at risk of torture and other human rights abuses.

Mr Ablyazov, a former energy minister and chairman of BTA bank, fled Kazakhstan in 2009. He was granted political asylum in the UK but his current location is not known.

BTA filed a lawsuit against him, accusing him of siphoning off billions of US dollars from the bank.

He denies wrongdoing, calling the case politically motivated. He is said to have funded opposition parties and media in Kazakhstan, where President Nursultan Nazarbayev keeps a tight grip on power and resists calls for democracy.

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Italy political storm over Kazakhs

17 July 2013 Last updated at 11:11 GMT Italy's interior minister - an ally of Silvio Berlusconi - is under fire A top civil servant has resigned in Italy amid a political storm over the deportation of a Kazakh dissident's wife and six-year-old daughter.

The interior minister's chief-of-staff, Giuseppe Procaccini, resigned as the incident threatened the stability of Italy's ruling coalition.

Media reports had accused him of meeting Kazakh officials before the deportation took place.

Interior Minister Angelino Alfano faces a Senate no-confidence vote on Friday.

The whereabouts of dissident oligarch Mukhtar Ablyazov are unknown.

But in May, his wife Alma Shalabayeva and their child were arrested in a night-time police raid on their villa in suburban Rome. They were then put on a private plane with Kazakh diplomats and flown to Kazakhstan.

The Kazakh ambassador has been summoned to the Italian foreign ministry for an explanation.

Bank funds 'missing'

Human rights campaigners have accused Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev of silencing independent media and persecuting political opponents, as well as using the police and courts to keep a tight grip on power.

Mr Ablyazov, a former energy minister and chairman of BTA bank, fled the country in 2009. He was granted political asylum in the UK but his current location is not known.

BTA filed a lawsuit against him, accusing him of siphoning off billions of US dollars from the bank. He denies wrongdoing, calling the case politically motivated.

Interior Minister Alfano, who is in Silvio Berlusconi's centre-right People of Freedom (PdL) party, told parliament on Tuesday that he had not been told about the police operation targeting Mr Ablyazov's family.

"I was not informed and nor was any colleague in the government or the prime minister informed," he said, adding that he had ordered a review of the department that handles deportations, "so this can never happen again".

Opposition politicians are demanding his resignation over the affair. "This is not a credible story. It's something from a Grade Z movie," said Michele Giarrusso, a senator from the anti-establishment Five Star Movement.

Mr Alfano, quoted by the Associated Press news agency, said Kazakh diplomats had urged police to search for Mr Ablyazov in Rome and had then demanded that the fugitive's wife and child be deported.

Was it collusion?

Ms Shalabayeva is reported to be at her parents' home in the Kazakh capital Almaty with her daughter. She cannot leave the city and is accused of having obtained false passports for family members, Reuters news agency reports.

Mr Ablyazov says it was a Kazakh state-organised "kidnapping" and he fears for his family's safety.

The operation was condemned by Amnesty International.

"The Italian authorities must ensure that there is a full investigation and criminal prosecution for any violation of their human rights. Only then can any allegations of collusion between the Italian and Kazakhstani authorities be put to rest," said John Dalhuisen, director of Amnesty's Europe and Central Asia Programme.

The Italian government has retroactively revoked the expulsion order for Ms Shalabayeva and her daughter.

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Italy country profile

25 June 2013 Last updated at 15:10 GMT Take the art works of Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Tintoretto and Caravaggio, the operas of Verdi and Puccini, the cinema of Federico Fellini, add the architecture of Venice, Florence and Rome and you have just a fraction of Italy's treasures from over the centuries.

While the country is renowned for these and other delights, it is also notorious for its precarious political life and has had several dozen governments since the end of World War II.

The Italian political landscape underwent a seismic shift in the early 1990s when the "mani pulite" ("clean hands") operation exposed corruption at the highest levels of politics and big business. Several former prime ministers were implicated and thousands of businessmen and politicians were investigated.

Millions of tourists visit Italy to see its antiquities, such as Michelangelo's David

There were high hopes at the time that the "mani pulite" scandal would give rise to a radical reform of Italian political culture, but these hopes were dashed when the old structures were replaced by a new political landscape dominated by the multi-millionaire businessman Silvio Berlusconi, who himself became increasingly mired in scandals and corruption affairs.

Continue reading the main story Politics: Enrico Letta leads a grand coalition formed two months after the 2013 elections left a stalemated parliament Economy: Italy has the eurozone's third largest economy and a huge public debt - second only to Greece'sInternational: Italian forces have been active in peacekeeping in the Balkans, Africa and Middle East, and are present in Afghanistan

Country profiles compiled by BBC Monitoring

The growing popularity since 2009 of a protest movement led by the comedian and activist Beppe Grillo reflects the level of discontent with all the mainstream parties, which many Italians see as being irredeemably self-serving and out of touch with the concerns of ordinary citizens.

Italy was one of the six countries that signed the 1951 Paris Treaty setting Europe off on the path to integration. It has been staunchly at the heart of Europe ever since, although the government led by Mr Berlusconi in the early 2000s adopted a more Eurosceptic stance.

Mr Berlusconi sought to align Italy more closely to the US, breaking ranks with the country's traditional allies, France and Germany, in his support for the US-led campaign in Iraq.

Italy is the fourth largest European economy and for long enjoyed one of the highest per capita incomes in Europe, despite the decline in traditional industries such as textiles and car manufacturing as a result of globalisation.

But it became one of the first eurozone victims of the global financial crisis of 2008. By mid-2012, Italy had the second-highest level of public debt - a towering 123% of GDP (annual economic output) - in the eurozone.

There is concern over Italy's birth rate - one of the lowest in Europe - and the economic implications of an ageing population.

Italy is renowned for its treasures, such as Venice, a city surrounded by water

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