Thirty-nine people not including the crew left at 6:15 today.
The passengers include the Afghan children who were treated in the Czech Republic. The rest are Czech soldiers who are returning from holiday back to the Afghan mission, part of the new contingent of a field hospital and a chemical warfare unit deployed at the Kabul airport, and also Vaclav Pecha, head of the civilian section of the Czech Provincial Reconstruction Team operating in the Logar province. Czech planes had similar problems with Turkmen authorities last year and in 2006. The so far most serious was in December 2006 when a Czech plane, with a delegation returning from Afghanistan and Czech military plane returns as Turkmenistan denies transit to it ...
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Czechs, Slovak to create battlegroup ... including then Czech chief-of-staff Pavel Stefka, was detained at the Ashgabat airport for 14 hours. At the time, the Turkmen authorities blocked the plane during its stop-over in Ashgabat allegedly over the presence of armed bodyguards aboard. This caused a diplomatic rift between the Czech Republic and Turkmenistan. The plane then reportedly left Ashgabat only on the order of Saparmurat Niyazov, the then authoritarian Turkmen president.
(Ceske Noviny)
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