Today is the third anniversary of the alleged assassination attempt on President Saparmurat Niyazov. Immediately after the alleged attack, which took place at 7 a.m. as Niyazov drove to work, the names of the conspirators were given as former foreign minister Boris Shikhmuradov, former ambassador to Turkey, Nurmuhammaed Hanamov, former Central Bank chairman Khudaiberdy Orazov and former deputy Agricultural Minister Saparmurat Yklimov. It was particularly strange that the names should have been read out live on television no more than a few hours after Niyazov had arrived at his presidential palace, however the consequences of the event were a massive wave of arbitrary arrests and reprisals.
Shikhmuradov, then exiled leader of the opposition, had long been militating against Niyazov’s repressive regime. As one the leaders of the Turkmen Popular Democratic Movement, Nurmukhammed Khanamov, recalls in an interview to Deutsche Welle:

“The Turkmen Popular Democratic Movement (NDDT), founded at the end of Novemeber 2001, operated under the leadership of Boris Shikhmuradov and carried out a great deal of work. However, we constantly said that nothing significant would happen if the people failed to rise up. We learnt, from a number of sources, that the people were ready, and all that was needed on the inside was someone to lead the movement. And that is why Shikhmuradov was in Turkmenistan.”

Indeed, Shikhmuradov had covertly returned to Turkmenistan in September, after several months of travelling the world raising opposition to Niyazov. He managed to avoid detection by the police until 26 December, when he was taken into custody. Three days later, he appeared on television reading a confession, of being a drug addict among other things, and implicating many supposed co-conspirators.
The fate of the accused would-be assassins has never been fully explained. Again, as Deutsche Welle reports:

One of the demands made of Niyazov by rights organisations is that he allow Red Cross workers access to the prisoners charged with the events of 25 November. This request has been refused by Turkmenbashi’s regime. The current location of these prisoners is unknown.
Meanwhile, a DW correspondent has been told by a source within the security apparatus that Boris Shikhmuradov and six other prisoners are being kept in a high-security bunker in a Ministry of Internal Affairs detention unit in the centre of Ashgabat. Their state of health is said to be very poor. As the source said, the Ukrainian government has specific information about the building of these bunkers, as they were built by hired Ukrainian workers on Niyazov’s direct orders. In light of the worsening relations between Turkmenistan and Ukraine, there are serious fears in Ashgabat that Kiev could expose these facts.
Furthermore, a source at the office of the Turkmen General Prosecutor has revealed that many of the family members and associates of the alleged assassination plotters, who were thrown into prison after 25 November, have been released on condition that they repudiate the “traitors of the motherland”. More than 15o people sentenced to extended prison terms are now in prisons in Ovadan Depe and Turkmenbashi. Some of these have died or committed suicide.