Serbian, Israeli, Belarusian Specialists to Service Equipment for Turkmenistan’s Security Ministry

Specialists from Serbia, Israel, and Belarus will visit Turkmenistan to provide technical support to equipment of the National Security Ministry. This follows from decisions taken on April 9 this year at a meeting of Turkmenistan’s Extraordinary Commission to Combat Infectious Diseases.

Turkmen.news has a copy of the document, which says that 13 specialists, including seven citizens of Serbia, five citizens of Israel, and one citizen of Belarus are to arrive in the country in April or May.

The trip is being made on the basis of an agreement on technical support for the special equipment.

Foreign companies have been caught out cooperating with Turkmen special services several times. In 2019 RFE/RL Turkmen service discovered that the National Security Ministry uses equipment from the German company Rohde & Shwarz to listen to and monitor online activity.

In 2015 Swiss media found that two years earlier Swiss companies had revoked licenses for the export of technology to several countries, including Turkmenistan, Russia, China, Yemen, and the UAE.

During the COVID-19 pandemic the Extraordinary Commission to Combat Infectious Diseases agrees all arrivals in and departures from the country for business or personal reasons. The commission’s decisions are not published officially – the authorities deny the presence of coronavirus in Turkmenistan. But turkmen.news has already managed twice to obtain lists of the commission’s decisions from unofficial sources: in August 2021 and January 2022. Turkmen.news has now received a third list.