Will Bangkok bombings truth ever emerge?
Channel 4 News Asia Correspondent John Sparks asks what Thailand has to gain from proving the innocence or guilt of the Iranian state following the Bangkok bombings?
A quick note from Bangkok’s Metropolitan Police headquarters on the latest from the “Bangkok bomb plot”. The police held a short press conference today on a series of explosions that managed to shock the easy-going Thai capital two weeks ago.
A group of suspected assassins blew their cover – and the roof over their hide-out when a number of bombs detonated unintentionally.
Later, they tried to escape the scene with varying degrees of success. One suspect blew his legs off in a confrontation with police. Another two were arrested in regional airports while two managed to escape.
All five suspects held valid Iranian passports. The incident may have been related to a series of attacks on Israeli diplomats that took place a day earlier in Delhi and Tbilisi.
Read more: Iran responsible for Thai bombings says Israel
There was something slightly comical about the whole thing here – a couple of the men were photographed before the incident, fraternizing with prostitutes in a sleazy sea-side resort called Pattaya.
Police think they marked out the location for their attacks rather publicly with a bunch of stickers placed on road signs and photo booths. The stickers read “SEJEAL” – an Arabic word found in the Koran meaning small pieces of stone. Let’s not forgot the man who blew his legs off either – 27-year-old Saeid Moradi. Police say he aimed a bomb at a patrol car but it bounced back at him after it hit a tree.
So it came as a surprise today when one of the senior investigators, Police General Pansiri Prapawat, said the bombers seemed to know what they were doing; “…from the investigation we can say this has been well prepared, in terms of their accommodation, vehicles, explosives, bombs, communications device. This had all been set-up.”
He still couldn’t tell me who the assassins were working for – “we’re working on it,” he said in reply to my utterings.
This is a key question of course but it has to be said that we really don’t know whether we’ll get an answer – or whether the authorities will be sufficiently motivated to extract it. Thais are loathed to get involved in other countries’ problems – when invited to condemn the actions of various nations/dictatorships/dodgy states, Thai friends often tell me, “we like to be friends with everyone”.
So what does Thailand have to gain from proving the innocence or guilt of the Iranian state? Other than the truth, probably not a whole lot.
You can follow John Sparks on Twitter @c4sparks