Thai gov expert insists bomb was put together by professionals

from the Bangkok Post:

Expert insists bomb was put together by professionals

An expert who foiled what was said to be a bomb plot against caretaker Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra has maintained the bomb was assembled by professionals. Pol Lt-Col Kamthorn Ouicharoen, a 38-year-old officer of the Metropolitan Police Bureau's bomb disposal unit, said the materials found in a Daewoo sedan were ready to explode.

He explained the operation before reporters in a bid to dispel suggestions that the discovery of explosive materials on Thursday was a set-up.

''On seeing the detonating circuit, I could tell immediately that it was a professional job made in a military fashion by an expert,'' said Pol Lt-Col Kamthorn, who is currently on holiday from a bomb disposal mission in the three southernmost provinces.

He served in the air force's Directorate of Armaments for almost 20 years before transferring to become a police officer.

''From the video recording, the detonating circuit was ready to set off a massive explosion,'' he said.

Pol Lt-Col Kamthorn said the explosives were second only in size to the huge bomb discovered by police in Soi Lang Suan in Bangkok in 1994 in a foiled terror attack against the Israeli embassy.

The officer said there were three possible reasons to explain why the bombs did not go off. The person who had the remote control device might have been too far away to send a signal to detonate them, or he might have been hidden in the area with something blocking the signal.

Lastly, he said, the detonating circuit might have become faulty or the person may not yet have tried to detonate the bombs. The explosives with labels showing numbers and technical details would enable police to trace their origin.

An intelligence officer based in the deep South said that the TNT explosives could have caused damage over a 50-metre radius.

That remark was at odds with an assertion by police that the explosion could have devastated everything in a one-kilometre radius.

Panithan Wattanayakorn, a political science lecturer at Chulalongkorn University, said only international terrorist groups would typically plant a bomb with the potential to cause extensive damage over a one-kilometre radius. Such a bomb had never gone off in Thailand.

Mr Panithan cited the Bali bombing where hundreds of kilogrammes of explosives were used.

The explosives discovered on Thursday, weighing 67kg, were not capable of inflicting such extensive damage, he said.

No real specialists had come out to provide details of the explosives.

He said the police were particularly active in this case and seemed to have complete details and information, which was a far cry from their approach to the southern unrest.

Army specialist Maj-Gen Khatiya Sawasdipol, alias ''Seh Daeng'', said he believed the bomb plot was a set-up by police to deceive people.

He said electrical wires in the detonating circuit were not connected properly and the bombs could not have been set off.