In connection with this, Niyazov announced that law-enforcement organs, especially local ones, “do not always come up to standard”, and those guilty of contravention of laws were “first and foremost local police chiefs”. Soon after this announcement, police departments received an instruction concerning strengthening control over people entering border regions.

Back in 2000, Dashoguz and a large part of Lebap regions, both bordering onto Uzbekistan, were declared border zones, entry into which required a special permit for those not living there: this to be issued by the police. The permit would be issued on receiving an invitation from a resident of the border zone. This resident would need to fill out an application form specifying the purpose of the trip and the relationship to the person visiting the border zone. The resident would sign, accepting responsibility for the visitor in the border zone. Until recently these applications were issued by local authorities immediately after the appropriate payment.

After Niyazov’s announcement in September, an additional procedure was introduced to check on the applicant. Now the completed questionnaire to obtain an invitation goes additionally from the local authority to the police, where the information about the person requesting the invitation (i.e. the local resident) is examined. As a result the registration of the invitation takes not less than three days.

According to local observers, since the year 2002 invitations have usually only been issued to relatives of border zone residents. However, the exact relationship between the resident and visitor was not checked by the authorities. Now the situation has changed.

An inhabitant who had arrived in Ashkhabad from one of the northern areas of Turkmenistan said that ticket offices do not sell air or train tickets if one is not registered in Dashoguz or does not have an entry visa. “There are seven control posts on the road from Ashkhabad to Dashoguz; however it is often possible to continue by paying a small bribe”.

Especial attention is paid to controlling the movements of foreign citizens. In March 2004, the correspondent for the Central Asian bureau of France Presse, Nick Coleman, was, in spite of accreditation by the Foreign Ministry, stopped on arrival at Dashoguz, as this journey had not been agreed on by the authorities. On the following day he was sent back to Ashkhabad on the first flight, and soon after left the country.

According to some information, President Niyazov’s announcement about the necessity of strengthening entry controls into the border zones was connected to the end of investigations against Mamur Ataev, Seyran Mamedov, Dovlet Niyazdurdiev and others arrested in July 2004 and accused of preparing to illegally cross the border.

An announcement by political emigrant Saparmurad Iklimov, based in Sweden, stated that on 7 October 2004 a closed court session judged nine Turkmen citizens arrested in connection with the above-mentioned accusations. Most of the accused were sentenced to long periods of detention. Ataev and Mamedov were sentenced to 18 years imprisonment; Niyazdurdiev (related to the brothers Iklimov) received 15 years. The names of the others in court are not known. According to law enforcement bodies, Ataev, Mamedov and Niyazdurdiev were detained several hours before their planned departure for Dashoguz.

Viktor Belyalov, a refugee who fled the country for Russia in September, said that not less than seven people had been arrested. According to him, several more people had been detained in Ashkhabad and Dashoguz and subjected to torture before then being released. Belyalov however refused to offer any further details for reasons of safety.