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Ashgabat, Turkmenistan: Turkmenistan's security chief accused a French diplomat of providing eyeglasses fitted with a hidden video camera to a dissident working in cahoots with a US-funded radio station to videotape public protests. Public protests are extremely rare in the tightly controlled ex-Soviet republic and never reported by local media, which are fully in government hands. Occasional rumours of isolated protests cannot be officially confirmed. National Security Minister Geldymukhamed Ashirmukhamedov said on Tuesday that Henri Tomasini, a cultural adviser at the French Embassy, used rights activist Annakurban Amangyldyzhov to get "video material of slanderous and provocative nature intended for foreign special services and subversive centres."
Ashirmukhamedov, who was speaking at a government meeting on Monday, said the alleged plot involved another Frenchman, Benjamin Moreau, who worked at the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe. President Saparmurat Niyazov, who also attended Monday's meeting, said "all such actions aimed against the country must be investigated and given a political assessment." "They should be expelled, or else, if we pretend that we are not noticing anything, they do worse things," said Niyazov. Niyazov has ruled the Central Asian nation with an iron fist for 20 years, isolating the nation of 6 million from the outside world and creating an elaborate personality cult around himself. Ashirmukhamedov said Amangyldyzhov was arrested on Saturday allegedly in possession of arms and ammunition while trying to illegally collect information in Ashgabat.
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