Begench Amandurdievich Beknazarov (Turkmen: Begenç Amandurdiýewiç Beknazarow; Russian: Бегенч Амандурдыевич Бекназаров) was a military officer in the Armed Forces of Turkmenistan,[1] who was sentenced to life in 2005 for his alleged role in the assassination attempt on President of Turkmenistan Saparmurat Niyazov.
[3][4] Beknazarov was born in Ashgabat on 11 June 1969[5] in a blended Turkmen and Russian Jewish family of four, with his father working as a tractor drivers' foreman and his mother as a nurse.
Upon graduation, he went to the Frunze Higher Military Academy in Kyiv, where he in autumn 1986 took part in the response to the Chernobyl disaster.
In 1997 he completed a six-month course at a NATO school in Germany, after which he became the deputy commander of the 22nd Motor Rifle Division "Atamyrat Niyazov".
Niyazov reprimanded Minister of Defense Rejepbay Arazov for allowing such people like Beknazarov saying that "every military unit commander would be carefully checked to the third degree, then there would not be any individuals such as Beknazarov.” On 17 December 2002, Beknazarov's parents, Raisa (born 1947) and Amandurdy (born 1939), as well as his 19-year-old sister were detained at the pre-trial detention center of the KNB building without formal charges in an attempt to obtain information about his whereabouts, threatening and intimidating them in the process.