Thailand files charges vs. Iranian bomb suspects
BANGKOK: Thailand charged two Iranians on Wednesday over an alleged bomb plot against Israeli diplomats, officials said, piling pressure on Tehran over accusations of a terror campaign against the Jewish state.
Tensions between the Middle East arch-foes have risen sharply following three bomb incidents in world capitals in less than 24 hours, but Iran angrily rejected accusations that it was to blame.
On Monday, bombers targeted Israeli embassy staff in India and Georgia, with a female diplomat seriously wounded in New Delhi.
Thai authorities said that they had filed criminal charges against two Iranian suspects accused of involvement in a string of blasts in Bangkok on Tuesday.
One of the men—identified as 28year-old Saeid Morati—had his legs blown off as he hurled an explosive device at Thai policemen while fleeing an earlier blast at a house in the Thai capital, officials said.
A second Iranian suspect was detained after trying to board a flight out of the country while a third sus- pect is believed to have fled to Malaysia, they added.
“These three Iranian men are an assassination team and their targets were Israeli diplomats, including the ambassador,” a senior Thai intelligence official told Agence FrancePresse on condition of anonymity.
“Their plan was to attach bombs to diplomats’ cars,” the official said.
Explosives and magnets were later found inside the partially destroyed house, police said.
The two suspects were charged with causing an illegal explosion and attempting to kill police officers and members of the public, Foreign Minister Surapong Tovichakchaikul told reporters.
“We cannot say yet if it’s a terrorist act,” he said, “but it’s similar to the assassination attempt against a diplomat in India.”
In that attempt, an Israeli diplomat suffered grave shrapnel wounds when a motorbike assailant attached a bomb to her car.
Israel has blamed Iran for orches- trating Monday’s attacks on Israeli embassy staff in India and Georgia, and was quick to accuse the Islamic republic of involvement in Tuesday’s blasts.
“The attempted attack in Bangkok proves once again that Iran and its proxies are continuing to act in the ways of terror and the latest attacks are an example of that,” Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said.
Israel’s ambassador to Thailand, Itzhak Shoham, said that the Bangkok suspects appeared to be “part of the same network” that targeted Israeli embassy staff in India and Georgia.
Iran, which has already denied responsibility for the Delhi and Tbilisi incidents, said that it had no link to the Bangkok blasts and blamed what it called “elements linked with the (Israeli) Zionist regime.”
Observers, however, noted that the use of motorbike assassins to blow up targets’ cars closely mirrored the method used to murder nuclear scientists in Iran in the past two years, raising the possibility of Iranian payback and a vicious covert war between the Middle East foes.