Niyazov escaped unhurt after, as he claims, gunmen opened fire on his motorcade on 25 November. The Turkmen President for life has since launched a fierce police crackdown against the suspected perpetrators and named Sheykhmoradov as the main brain behind a coup against him. Some human rights watchdogs claim that more than 100 people have been arrested following the alleged assassination attempt.

But experts and foreign diplomats points out that the light arms with which the gunmen opened fire on Mr. Niyazov’s motorcade were not a match for the armoured official cars and therefore believe that the assassination attempt was in fact a scenario aimed at justifying the ongoing repression on the dissidents.

Shots of the trial broadcast by the State-controlled Turkmen Television shocked all defenders of human rights, as, an audience of more than 1.000 officials and apparatchiks., including the megalomaniac Niyazov, was watching on a huge screen in the tribunal, the former Foreign Minister "confessing" to his "crimes against the beloved Father of the Turkmens and the nation".

Human rights groups and analysts have denounced the sentences as unfair and have compared the proceedings to the Stalinist trials of the 1930s that were designed to eliminate the opposition.

Mr. Sheykhmoradov had returned to Turkmenistan last autumn after years he had spent abroad, hoping to lead the opposition against Niyazov, according to Mr. Vitali Ponomariov, a Russian expert on Turkmenistan.

"Purges launched by the Turkembashi (Father of the Turkmens) since spring of 2002 in the State Administration, but particularly in the security machine had created a certain malaise and Sheykhoradov had hoped to profit from the situation, but it seems that he had been drawn into a trap sat by the opponents manipulated by the regime", he told the influential French daily "Le Monde".

Two other exiled former officials, Central Bank chief Khudaiberdy Orazov and former Ambassador to Turkey Noormohammad Khanamov, received the same sentence, in absentia.

"Spontaneous" demonstrations by collective of Turkmen Workers had taken place in Eshqabad days before the one-day trial, calling for death sentence for the "traitors".

Sheykhmoradov, also a former ambassador to China, publicly broke with Niyazov’s administration in 2001, declaring himself an opposition leader in exile. He has since been accused of an array of crimes, all of which he was shown confessing to on Turkmen state television on 29 December.

"It’s quite clear that many, many people have been arrested there on an arbitrary basis and that the alleged assassination attempt is a pretext for a wave of repression in Turkmenistan that’s quite unprecedented in recent years", Aaron Rhodes, executive director of the Vienna-based International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights told the Prague-based Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

Though Sheykhmoradov said he was making his confession voluntarily, but Elizabeth Andersen, the executive director for Europe and Central Asia at the New York-based Human Rights Watch said she is almost positive the confession was dictated to him.

But in his 29 December confession, Sheykhmoradov said that he entered Turkmenistan in September and had spent the fall preparing for mass protests against Niyazov. He said the protests were set to begin at the end of November.

The methods the Turkmen government has used to investigate the alleged assassination attempt have drawn international attention and indignation.

In early December, the U.S. State Department accused Turkmenistan of violating international legal procedures in the arrest of a U.S. citizen, Leonid Komarovsky, who was detained in connection with the alleged plot. The State Department also called on Eshqabad to conduct its investigation in a "full, fair, and transparent" manner.

On 9 December, the European Union issued a statement criticizing the detention of numerous relatives of the alleged instigators of the attack. The EU statement demanded that Turkmen authorities act in "full compliance" with the country’s international human rights obligations and follow due process of law.

And in a written statement on 31 December, U.S. State Department spokesman Philip Reeker said Turkmen authorities had carried out summary trials, arrested opposition members and civil-society activists apparently unconnected to the attack against Niyazov, and denied U.S. requests for consular access to Komarovsky.

A close ally of the neighbouring Islamic Republic, Niyazov, a George Orwell character, shares many similarities with his Iranian and North Korean counterparts: His huge portraits are omnipresent, including on the labels of the locally produced Vodka, his name given to everything and every place, including the country’s main port on the Caspian Sea.

Like the Iranian "Beloved, Esteemed and Greatest Leader" Ayatollah Ali Khameneh'i, and the North Korean Kim Jong Il, the 62 years-old Niyazov is also a poet, epic writer and innovator. His great masterwork, the "Roohnameh", or the Book of the Soul, compared by his cronies to the Qor’an, the Muslims holly book, tells his citizen about their origins and how they should conduct themselves in this life. He has also changed the names of the days of the week and the, months of the year after his own names and those of his mother, father, close relatives.

But contrary to Iran, where life is excessively costly for ordinary people, the Turkmen do not pay for water, health, electricity or education, which explains the popularity of Turkmenbashi, who, thanks to big French and Turkish construction firms, has transformed the capital from a dormant, peaceful village into a big, modern city with large boulevards, first class hotels and beautiful parks.

Until now, Russia and the United States have accommodated, -- the Americans have a huge military base there in the fight against al-Qa’eda in neighbouring Afghanistan, the Russians getting huge discounts on the price of gas they import from Turkmenistan -- but after the Turkmenbashi’s special forces raided the Uzbek embassy in Eshqabad and expelled Uzbek diplomats as "persona non grata" suspected to have hidden Sheykhmoradov in the embassy compound, things might change, diplomats say. ENDS SHEYKHMORADOV TRIAL 5103