Terror plot still a mystery

Thailand in the dark over Iranians and Valentine’s Day explosion

BANGKOK: It began when three men blew up their house accidentally on Valentine’s Day in Bangkok. It ended with a gory scene that looked more like Baghdad: A bloodied, would-be bomber with severed legs moaning on a glass-strewn sidewalk after another botched blast.

Last week’s explosions in the Thai capital announced the apparent arrival of international terrorists in this South-east Asian nation, revealing a plot allegedly aimed against Israeli diplomats.

So far, three Iranian citizens have been detained in the case, and this week, a Thai court issued an arrest warrant for an additional Iranian suspect.

Yesterday, police also were investigating the discovery of strange stickers plastered on Bangkok utility poles and billboards that may have marked routes for intended victims.

However, profound questions remain about who was behind the plot, and why.

Was it part of a covert tit-for-tat war in which Iranians are hitting back at Israel for allegedly killing Iranian nuclear scientists in Teheran?

Were the assailants part of a global terror network? If they were professional assassins, why were they so inept?

“There are many theories,” government spokeswoman Thitima Chaisaeng said shortly after the Bangkok blasts. And so far, not many answers. The explosions on Feb 14 came one day after two other incidents in India and the former Soviet Republic of Georgia in which bombers tried to hit Israeli targets with so-called “sticky” bombs that attach magnetically to vehicles. Whoever was responsible for the cross-continental string of violence, the perception that Teheran is to blame “has undoubtedly exacerbated the already mounting tensions surrounding Iran’s nuclear programme, and international efforts to curtail it,” said Will Hartley, head of the Terrorism & Insurgency Centre at IHS Jane’s in London.

Iran has denied responsibility. Thai investigators, meanwhile, have been left to pick up the pieces and solve the riddle of what happened on Thai soil.