27-Nov-20: Are Australian news reports whitewashing who the Iranian prisoners freed by Thailand really are?

Dr Kylie Moore-Gilbert in an Iranian news clip [Image Source]

There's been a major development in a long-running battle to save an innocent female hostage from the malevolent rulers of Iran. 

This is from Australia's national broadcaster:

British-Australian academic Kylie Moore-Gilbert is now departing Iran after spending more than 800 days in prison. Two videos released by Iranian state television showed the Melbourne University Middle East specialist in transit, with the latest video showing her boarding what appears to be an Australian Government-chartered jet. Dr Moore-Gilbert was sent to Tehran's Evin Prison in September 2018 and sentenced to 10 years on espionage charges — which she has always denied. International pressure on Iran to secure Dr Moore-Gilbert's release escalated in recent months, following reports that her health was deteriorating during long stretches of solitary confinement and that she had been transferred to the notorious Qarchak Prison, east of Tehran... "Kylie Moore-Gilbert has been released in exchange for three Iranian men — who are they?"

Since this came out, Dr Moore-Gilbert has thankfully arrived home safely ["Kylie Moore-Gilbert arrives in Australia after being released from Iranian prison", ABC, November 26, 2020]

 

According to a BBC news report last night:

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison described her release as a miracle, saying she seemed in good spirits when he spoke to her. "The injustice of her detention and her conviction, Australia has always rejected, and I'm just so pleased that Kylie's coming home," he told local network Nine. Mr Morrison declined to comment on whether a swap had taken place, but said no-one had been released in Australia. His government has been silent on the circumstances surrounding the deal, and some observers have said it could encourage Iran, which is accused of "hostage diplomacy". According to Thai authorities, the three Iranians were not exchanged with anyone.

But there's a problem - one that has familiar echoes to it.

Mainstream Australian media reports like the one in Melbourne's The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald have answered the ABC headline's question ("Kylie Moore-Gilbert has been released in exchange for three Iranian men — who are they?"). But in doing so, they significantly mischaracterize who the three Iranians imprisoned by Thailand, and now released, actually were and are. 

The Australian dailies report that the three Iranian convicted terrorists, Masoud Sedaghatzadeh, Saeid Moradi and Mohammad Khazaei

"were all detained in Thailand on charges of having planned to bomb the capital, Bangkok, in 2012 that authorities said was intended to target Israeli diplomats... News of the exchange was first broken by Iran's Young Journalist Club, a news website affiliated to state television in Iran, which trumpeted the release of the three men who faced "baseless charges" and were "exchanged for a dual national spy named Kylie Moore-Gilbert, who worked for the Zionist regime".

Detained? Horse manure. 

Far from just being detained, those Iranians were arrested, tried, convicted on terrorism charges and imprisoned by Thailand. See Reuters, August 22, 2013. 

Prior to their convictions but after they were arrested, we wrote here nearly eight years ago about the terrorism for which they had been taken into custody: "16-Feb-12: Bangkok: So what actually happened there on Tuesday?"

"Detained" is what the Arabic-language media mischievously say about fugitive Sbarro bomber Ahlam Tamimi constantly ["16-Nov-20: Justice, the Tamimi extradition and what Jordan tells Arabic media but not the world"]. It conceals the reality that she confessed and was tried and convicted of terrorism and in due course sentenced to sixteen consecutive terms of life imprisonment. 

Their systematic concealing of incontrovertible reality lets them get away with murder.

It's now plausible, at least to us, that this week's multi-party deal is the reason why Dr Kylie Moore-Gilbert, an Australian-British academic who lectures in Islamic studies at University of Melbourne, was taken prisoner and held hostage by Iran in the first place. 

18-Apr-14: In Thailand, a Hezbollah terrorist plot is thwarted

The home page of the stop910.com website today focuses
on the men arrested in Bangkok

Terrorist attacks rarely end up being thwarted as comprehensively as the latest such attempt in Thailand. Verbatim quotes now, in bullet points, from today's edition of the Bangkok Post:

• Assistant [Thai] national police chief Winai Thongsong said the men were arrested at different locations in Bangkok after Thai police received intelligence from Israel about a planned attack on Israeli tourists during Passover, the Jewish festival which coincided with Songkran... "If we had been unable to arrest the men during Songkran, a bomb attack would certainly have taken place somewhere on Khao San Road," he said.
• The men have been identified as French-Lebanese national Daoud Farhat and Lebanese-Filipino national Youssef Ayad... Farhat held a French passport... Ayad carried a Philippines passport... The source also said Mr Ayad had given useful information to police... 
• He admitted his group entered Thailand to carry out a bomb attack against Israeli tourists and other Israeli groups on Khao San Road during Songkran.
• Both Mr Farhat and Mr Ayad are listed on the website Stop910.com, which collects information on suspected terrorist cells operating in Asia, and carries notices of financial rewards for information.
• One of the men admitted to a planned attack on Israeli tourists in Khao San Road during Songkran, according to an investigator... They were arrested on suspicion of links to militant Islamist group, Hezbollah.
• Both were born in Lebanon... authorities have yet to confirm if the travel documents are genuine.
• Investigators believe at least nine suspected foreign terrorists connected to Hezbollah are somewhere in Thailand. Authorities are attempting to track them down.

All of which means the Thais are determined to prevent the suspect from engaging in future such adventures, right? Not exactly:

• The two suspected foreign terrorists will be deported back to the last countries they travelled from immediately after Thai police finish questioning them. He did not name the countries.
• National Security Council chief Lt Gen Paradorn Pattanatabut confirmed Thai authorities are focusing on the capture of another foreign terrorist.

Khao San Road scene courtesy of TripAdvisor.com

About the website mentioned in the Bangkok newspaper report, Times of Israel calls stop910.com an "Israeli anti-terror website... which gathers information on terror cells in East Asia." If that's right, the investment sunk into it paid welcome dividends this week.

Khao San Road in central Bangkok, Thailand, was once a major rice market. Over the past two decades, it has become better known as a world-famous backpacker attraction, offering cheap accommodation as well as being a hub for bus travel throughout Thailand. Wikipedia says the short street is also famous as 

a center of dancing, partying, and just prior to the traditional Thai New Year (Songkran festival) of 13 April to 15 April, water splashing that usually turns into a huge water fight. One Thai writer has described Khaosan as "a short road that has the longest dream in the world."

Thankfully, this latest dream of the Hezbollah jihadists ended without innocent casualties. But will the decision of the local authorities to throw them back into the arms of those who sent them mean smaller threats in the future, or larger?

14-Jul-12: Terror attack in Cyprus foiled; the targets seem to have been Israelis

Cyprus: Police in action [Image Source]

In January 2012, a Lebanese man called Hussein Idris, holding a Swedish passport, was arrested together with a second Lebanese in Bangkok. Thai police charged them with plotting to explode several bombs in the Thai capital. The target (surprise, surprise): Israelis. Associated Press quoted the head of the Thai police saying the terrorists were "pro-Iranian Hezbollah militants". 

Today (Saturday) in Cyprus, the local police revealed that they arrested a Lebanese holding a Swedish passport some days ago. [But let's note that in Lebanon, they are saying tonight that the suspect's second passport was Saudi, not Swedish.]

This Swedish/Saudi Lebanese is a 24 year old man. The police in Cyprus say he had been tracking Israeli tourists on the island, and was evidently planning attack on buses according to a local news source quoted by the Jerusalem Post. No charges have been formally laid yet in this unfolding story, but in the words of the Cypriot police: "We can confirm the arrest of a 24-year-old foreign national for specific, serious offenses, and who is in custody by order of the court." On the other hand, "It is not clear what, or whether there was a target in Cyprus. That is under investigation," a senior government official told Reuters. AFP is more forthright, quoting a police source who said he could not deny or confirm the reports because it was a "sensitive political issue"... It did however say, basing itself on a Cypriot newspaper, Phileleftheros, that the terrorists were aiming at either buses or aircraft and that "notes with details of Israeli aircraft were found" in the possession of the arrested man.

The SigmaLive news site from Cyprus is connecting the suspect with Hizbollah. But there are few details. So we'll keep watching.

Is there a connection with Iran in this sordid story? Maybe. Associated Press is quoting Israeli prime minister Bibi Netanyahu tonight saying that Iran's hand is behind the affair. AP's report says "Netanyahu provided no proof to support his allegations..."

Let's recall the last major terror incident on the island of Cyprus. That was when a car bomb attack was mounted against the Israeli embassy in the capital, Nicosia, in May 1988 [report here]. The driver of a Mitsubishi sedan, loaded with 300 pounds of dynamite, tried to park outside the four-story Israeli embassy building but was told by guards he had to move on. Asked to identify himself, he instead drove off rapidly and crashed into another car some 200 meters away,  and the car exploded seconds later, killing the driver (named as Kaddour Gaonajan, 24) and two innocent Cypriots; seventeen others were injured. The vehicle's owner was Omar Ahmad Hawillo, also described then as a Lebanese. He escaped from the vehicle just before it exploded and was soon arrested. Convicted later that year, he confessed to being a member of the Palestinian Arab Abu Nidal terrorist group [source] that had carried out the September 1986 terrorist attack on the Neve Shalom synagogue in Istanbul, Turkey, that killed twenty-two. He was sentenced by a Cypriot court to fifteen years in prison, but served only eight years after a series of presidential pardons [see this 1996 Cypriot news report].

16-Feb-12: Bangkok: So what actually happened there on Tuesday?

The three Iranians suspected of executing the botched
terror attacks in Bangkok on 14-Feb-12. Legally they are
in a real mess with one of them no longer having a leg to stand on.

Not being able to decide whether a bombing is an act of terrorism can have a very significant impact on whether the next bombing happens or is prevented in time. We're witnessing that rather sad confusion in action today.

As of Thursday morning, 11 am Israel time, here's the latest update according to the BBC complete with its customary (and slightly mysterious) quotation marks.

Bangkok blast suspects 'targeting Israeli diplomats'   Thai police say they believe men detained after prematurely exploding bombs in Bangkok on Tuesday were intending to target two Israeli diplomats. They gave no further details of who the individual targets were. Two men, said to be Iranian, remain in custody in Bangkok. A third man is in custody in Malaysia. A fourth suspect is said to be on the run. Israel says Iran was behind the incident, but Tehran denies any role. The Bangkok blasts came a day after two attacks targeting Israeli diplomats in India and Georgia. An Israeli diplomat was injured in the Delhi attack, after a motorcycle rider attached an explosive device to her car. Around the same time a bomb beneath an Israeli diplomat's car in Tbilisi, Georgia, was found and defused. Several countries, including the US and the UK, have issued fresh travel advisories for Thailand in wake of the incident.

So it was a terrorist attack. And Israelis were the target (as in New Delhi and Tbilisi a day earlier.)

Or not. Here's what Xinhua, the Chinese newsagency, said in the last hour.

Bangkok blasts not terrorism: Deputy PM            Thailand's Deputy Prime Minister Gen Yuthasak Sasiprapha said Thursday that the three explosions in downtown Bangkok on Tuesday were a security issue and there was no evidence to classify them as a terror attack, the online edtion of The Nation newspaper reported. "The government views the blasts as having impacted on the national security," The Nation quoted Yuthasak as saying. The explosive devices undercovered were aimed for individual targets and the blasts involving Iranian bomber suspects were individual crimes and not a terrorist attack, Yuthasak said, reaffirming statements of National Security Council Secretary-General Wichean Photephosree at a press conference on Wednesday. The police investigation has yet to determine the motive why the suspects assembled the devices before the explosions, he said. The authorities had no evidence to link the suspects to the terrorist movement. Three consecutive blasts occurred Tuesday in downtown Bangkok, injuring five people. 

Whatever the true nature of the Bangkok bombing, Xinhua at least acknowledges whom the authorities in Thailand are pursuing:

Thai police have issued arrest warrants for four Iranian nationals on charges related to the blast.

For its part, Iran's world-class PressTV news channel ("the first Iranian international news network, broadcasting in English on a round-the-clock basis. Our global Tehran-based headquarters is staffed with outstanding Iranian and foreign media professionals..") knows who was behind the attack that cost one of the suspected Iranians his two legs:

Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast condemned the blasts and said that Israeli agents are often the perpetrators of such terrorist acts. 

Iran also says Israel is also the party behind Monday's terrorist attacks on Israelis in New Delhi and Tbilisi.

One of the Iranian suspects fled to Malaysia where he was arrested on Wednesday. AFP is reporting that the Thais are now seeking his extradition via their National Police Office and Attorney-General's Office. 

Should we expect the Iranian regime to get involved in fighting the extradition? That might make for some interesting quotations.