Is the Iranian community big in Singapore, should the
authorities be of concern regarding recent violence cause by
Iranians?
Iranians arrested after blasts on a Bangkok street aimed to
attack Israeli diplomats, and the devices used were similar to
bombs targeting Israelis in India and Georgia this
week, according to Thailand’s police
chief.
“The suspects targeted Israeli diplomats in Thailand,” Priewphan
Damaphong told reporters in Bangkok yesterday, hours after he
confirmed that the Bangkok bombs contained magnets designed to
attach to vehicles. India’s initial investigations suggest that a
magnetic device was attached to an Israeli diplomat’s car on Feb.
13 in New Delhi seconds before it exploded injuring the woman, the
city’s police commissioner, B.K. Gupta, has said.
“The type of explosive device is similar to the incident in
India,” Priewphan told reporters in Bangkok. The men “were not
targeting a place.”
The incidents in India, Georgia and Thailand increase tensions
as Israeli leaders, who haven’t ruled out a military strike, say
time is running out for sanctions to deter Iran from building nuclear
weapons. The U.S. and the European Union have tightened economic
restrictions while seeking to avert a military conflagration in a
region that holds more than half of global oil reserves.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu’s security cabinet convened yesterday to discuss the
attacks and hear Foreign Ministry and security officials’
assessments of the situation, Netanyahu’s office said in an
e-mailed statement.
Before the meeting, Netanyahu told the Knesset, Israel’s
parliament, that unless Iran is stopped, attacks against Israel
will spread to other countries.
“Israel’s security apparatus will know how to fight the Iranian
threat,” Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman said yesterday,
according to an e-mailed statement from his office.
Iran denies involvement in the attacks.
“Efforts by Israel to harm the friendly relations between
Thailand and Iran will bear no results,” Ramin
Mehmanparast, a foreign ministry spokesman, was quoted
as saying by the Iranian state-run Mehr news agency. Israel’s
“coordinated baseless accusations of our country having a hand in
blasts in India and Georgia and Bangkok shows the plot and the
setting up of a suspicious scenario.”
The attacks follow the deaths of several Iranian nuclear
scientists, the most recent in a Jan. 11 car bombing in Tehran that
Iran said Israel had orchestrated. They also coincided with the
fourth anniversary of the killing of Imad Mughniyeh, who was a
leader of the military wing of the Iranian-backed Lebanese
Hezbollah movement, which Israel and the U.S. consider a terrorist
organization.
India, Thailand and Georgia were probably
targeted according to the assets the perpetrators were able to
deploy, Will Hartley, head of the Terrorism & Insurgency Centre
at defense researcher IHS Jane’s, said in an e-mail.
“The initial impression is that they were selected to
demonstrate a wide-ranging international capability, rather than an
intent to target the specific countries themselves,” he said.
Thai officials detained two men with Iranian passports,
including one who blew his own legs off in Feb. 14 blasts.
Priewphan identified one of the suspects as Mohammad Khazaei, 42,
who he said police have connected to the explosions with
closed-circuit television images.
The men were charged yesterday with possession of explosive
devices with the intent to harm others, Foreign Ministry spokesman
Thani Thongpakdi said by phone.
Malaysian authorities arrested a third suspect in the attack,
Malaysia’s Inspector
General of Police Ismail Omar said in cellphone text message. “He
is being investigated for terrorism activities in relation to
bombings in Thailand,” Omar said. Thai police are also searching
for an Iranian woman who helped the three men rent the house in
Bangkok.
The arrests mark the second time in as many months Thai
authorities have detained suspects accused of targeting Jewish
sites in Bangkok. Police last month charged a Swedish-Lebanese man
they linked to Hezbollah with possessing illegal substances after
detaining him in connection with a plan to attack sites in the Thai
capital frequented by Americans and Israelis.
The arrest came three days after the U.S. Embassy in Bangkok
warned Jan. 13 that “foreign terrorists” aimed to attack tourist
areas. The U.S. and U.K. again warned citizens traveling in
Thailand to remain vigilant after Feb. 14 attacks, which injured
four people in addition to the suspect.
Here in Singapore, we have locals selling them weapons!
Four Singaporeans accused by the American government of sending
weapons parts to Iran were ordered to be extradited to the United
States by a district court on Friday.
The US authorities alleged that the Singaporeans, three men and
a woman, conspired to evade a US trade embargo against Iran by
smuggling electronic components from a US company to Iran, which
then ended up in explosives in Iraq.
Noting that the hearing was only to ascertain whether there was
sufficient evidence for extradition, District Judge Chia Wee Kiat
said the prosecution had made its case despite the denials of the
four.
In his 48-page judgment, he wrote: 'Where does the truth lie?
Clearly, this can only be ascertained at trial where the evidence,
explanations and credibility of witnesses can be tested under
cross-examination.'