Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov on May 18 pardoned more than 1,000 prisoners on the anniversary of the country's adoption of its national constitution.
National TV showed the president telling a government meeting that all of those pardoned should be allowed to go home to their families because of the holiday. He also ordered that jobs be found for all of those released.
Berdymukhammedov, who has announced several other pardons since taking office in 2007, has said prisoners would be pardoned on a regular basis just as his late predecessor Saparmurat Niyazov had done.
