2012 Bangkok bombings | |
---|---|
Part of Iran–Israel proxy conflict | |
Location | Watthana, Bangkok, Thailand |
Date | 14 February 2012 14:00 (UTC+7) |
Target | Israeli Embassy, Bangkok |
Attack type | Conspiracy |
Injured | 5 |
Perpetrators | Saeed Moradi (incarcerated) Mohammad Hazaei (incarcerated) Masoud Sedaghat Zadeh (in custody) Leila Rohani (now at large) Javad Nikkahfard (now at large) Ali Akbar Norouzi Shaya (now at large) |
The 2012 Bangkok bombings were a series of explosions that occurred in Bangkok, Thailand on 14 February 2012, injuring five people. Thai authorities said that the bombings were a botched attempt by Iranian nationals to assassinate Israeli diplomats. [1] Several Iranians were arrested and charged for the attacks, one of whom was badly injured.
The blasts occurred a day after attacks on Israeli diplomats in Tbilisi, Georgia and New Delhi, India. Israel said that the Iranian government was behind the bombings, a charge the government denied. [2] [3]
The first blast happened at about 14:00 at a safe house on Sukhumvit 71, which the suspects had rented. The explosion blew off part of the roof of the structure. The men then fled the house. Moradi, who was injured and bloodied, attempted to flag down a taxi. When the driver, seeing his state, refused to take him, he threw a grenade at the taxi. The grenade damaged the vehicle and injured the driver. Police officers who responded to the blasts then tried to stop Moradi, who tried to escape by throwing another grenade at them. The grenade bounced off a tree and back at him, exploding and severing both his legs. [4]
The investigation involved Thai police officials and forensic experts who collected samples and fragments from the blast sites; a forensic report on the type of explosives used, submitted to police within days; and CCTV footage of the suspects. [5]
Three of the Iranians charged with the bombings, Moradi, Khazaei and Zadeh, flew into Phuket in southern Thailand on 8 February. They then traveled to Pattaya, where they were alleged to have spent five nights in the company of three female prostitutes, before heading to Bangkok. [6] [7] [8]
Police Forensic Unit Commander Peerapong Damapong described the bombs used as "one of those transistor radios that you can carry around, but the insides have been taken out and replaced with C-4, with the head of the bomb consisting of a bolt, a pin and a detonator attached to it... From what we've seen, it's possible for the components to be bought in Thailand. The explosive isn't that complicated, it's just something that we haven't really seen in this country." [9]
A Thai official said on 17 February that the investigation had not discovered a link between the suspects and any group and that the bombings were probably not an attempt to kill Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who was scheduled to visit the country. [10]
On August 22, 2013, Saeid Moradi was sentenced to life imprisonment while Mohammad Hazaei was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment and deportation. [14]
In November 2020, during a "prisoner swap", Saeed Moradi, Mohammad Hazaei and Masoud Sedaghat Zadeh were exchanged for Kylie Moore-Gilbert. [15] Moore-Gilbert was a university lecturer held in Iran for 2 years. [16]
Chief of Royal Thai Police Priewpan Damapong instructed the Transportation Ministry to place the country's six international airports on high alert. The directive was said to follow reports provided by Israeli intelligence that further attacks on Thai soil were possible. [17]
Thai police carried out building-to-building searches around a Jewish synagogue on Sukhumvit Road. The synagogue was already under 24-hour police protection following the arrest in January of a Swedish-Lebanese alleged Hezbollah agent. [12]
The Counter-Terrorism Bureau of the Israeli National Security Council issued a worldwide travel warning, based on information that Iran and Hezbollah were planning additional attacks against Israelis and Jews. [18]
Imad Fayez Mughniyeh, alias al-Hajj Radwan, was a Lebanese militant leader who was the founding member of Lebanon's Islamic Jihad Organization and number two in Hezbollah's leadership. Information about Mughniyeh is limited, but he is believed to have been Hezbollah's chief of staff and understood to have overseen Hezbollah's military, intelligence, and security apparatuses. He was one of the main founders of Hezbollah in the 1980s. He has been described as "a brilliant military tactician and very elusive". He was often referred to as an ‘untraceable ghost’.
The attack on the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires was a suicide bombing attack on the building of the Israeli embassy of Argentina, located in Buenos Aires, which was carried out on 17 March 1992. 29 civilians were killed in the attack and 242 additional civilians were injured.
The Popular Resistance Committees is a coalition of a number of armed Palestinian groups opposed to what they regard as the conciliatory approach of the Palestinian Authority and Fatah towards Israel.
The relations between Iran and Israel are divided into four major phases: the ambivalent period from 1947 to 1953, the friendly period during the era of the Pahlavi dynasty from 1953 to 1979, the worsening period following the Iranian Revolution from 1979 to 1990, and the ongoing period of open hostility since the end of the Gulf War in 1991. In 1947, Iran was among 13 countries that voted against the United Nations Partition Plan for the British Mandate of Palestine. Two years later, Iran also voted against Israel's admission to the United Nations.
The 2006 Bangkok bombings occurred on 31 December 2006 and 1 January 2007, during New Year's Eve festivities in Bangkok, Thailand. Four explosions went off almost simultaneously in different parts of the city at around 18:00 local time, followed by several more explosions within the next 90 minutes. Two explosions also occurred after midnight. In total, eight explosions were reported during the night.
Numerous civilians, including men, women, children, government officials, activists, secular intellectuals and clerics have been victims of assassination, terrorism, or violence against non-combatants, over the course of modern Iranian history. Among the most notable acts of terrorism in Iran in the 20th century have been the 1978 Cinema Rex fire and the 1990s chain murders of Iran.
Lek Nana was a Thai businessman and politician. He was one of the founders of Thailand's Democrat Party at the end of World War II. Lek Nana served as Deputy Foreign Minister as well as Minister of Science, Technology, and Energy. A Muslim of Gujarati ancestry, he was a senior member of the Central Islamic Committee of Thailand. The Nana area on Sukhumvit Road derives its name from him.
Since the Iranian Revolution in 1979, the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran has been accused by several countries of training, financing, and providing weapons and safe havens for non-state militant actors, such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, and other Palestinian groups such as the Islamic Jihad (IJ) and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). These groups are designated terrorist groups by a number of countries and international bodies such as the EU, UN, and NATO; however, Iran considers such groups to be "national liberation movements" with a right to self-defense against Israeli military occupation. These proxies are used by Iran across the Middle East and Europe to foment instability, expand the scope of the Islamic Revolution, and carry out terrorist attacks against Western targets in the regions. Its special operations unit, the Quds Force, is known to provide arms, training, and financial support to militias and political movements across the Middle East, including Bahrain, Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, and Yemen.
The Abdullah Azzam Brigades, or al-Qaeda in Lebanon, is a Sunni Islamist militant group, and al-Qaeda's branch in Lebanon. The group, which began operating in 2009, was founded by Saudi Saleh Al-Qaraawi and has networks in various countries, mainly in Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Jordan, the Gaza Strip and Lebanon.
The 2010 Thai political protests were a series of political protests that were organised by the United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship (UDD) in Bangkok, Thailand from 12 March–19 May 2010 against the Democrat Party-led government. The UDD called for Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva to dissolve parliament and hold elections earlier than the end of term elections scheduled in 2012. The UDD demanded that the government stand down, but negotiations to set an election date failed. The protests escalated into prolonged violent confrontations between the protesters and the military, and attempts to negotiate a ceasefire failed. More than 80 civilians and six soldiers were killed, and more than 2,100 injured by the time the military violently put down the protest on 19 May.
The 2012 attacks on Israeli diplomats occurred on 13 February 2012 after a bomb explosion on an Israeli diplomatic car in New Delhi, India, wounding one embassy staff member, a local employee and two passers-by. Another bomb planted in a car in Tbilisi, Georgia failed to explode and was defused by Georgian police.
The 2012 Burgas bus bombing was a terrorist attack carried out by a suicide bomber on a passenger bus transporting Israeli tourists at the Burgas Airport in Burgas, Bulgaria, on 18 July 2012. The bus was carrying 42 Israelis, mainly youths, from the airport to their hotels, after arriving on a flight from Tel Aviv. The explosion killed the Bulgarian bus driver and five Israelis and injured 32 Israelis, resulting in international condemnation of the bombing.
Many terrorist attacks have occurred in Kenya during the 20th and 21st centuries. In 1980, the Jewish-owned Norfolk hotel was attacked by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). In 1998, the US embassy was bombed in Nairobi, as was the Israeli-owned Paradise hotel in 2002 in Mombasa. In 2013, the Somali jihadist group al-Shabaab killed 67 people at Nairobi's Westgate Shopping Mall. There have also been many other attacks.
The AMIA bombing occurred on 18 July 1994 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and targeted the Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina, a Jewish Community Centre. Executed as a suicidal attack, a bomb-laden van was driven into the AMIA building and subsequently detonated, killing 85 people and injuring over 300. To date, the bombing remains the deadliest terrorist attack in Argentine history. In 1994, Argentina was home to a Jewish community of 200,000, making it the largest in Latin America and the sixth-largest in the world outside of Israel.
On July 7, 2012, local authorities arrested Lebanese-born Swedish citizen Hossam Yaakoub in Limassol, Cyprus. Yaakoub admitted to being a member of the Shi'a Islamic militant group Hezbollah, who had been tasked with surveilling the activities of Israeli tourists on the island. Israel condemned the incident as an attempted terrorist attack.
The Iran–Israel proxy conflict, also known as the Iran–Israel proxy war or Iran–Israel Cold War, is an ongoing proxy conflict between Iran and Israel. In the Israeli–Lebanese conflict, Iran has supported Lebanese Shia militias, most notably Hezbollah. In the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Iran has backed Palestinian groups such as Hamas. Israel has supported Iranian rebels, such as the People's Mujahedin of Iran, conducted airstrikes against Iranian allies in Syria and assassinated Iranian nuclear scientists. In 2018 Israeli forces directly attacked Iranian forces in Syria.
The 2013 Iranian embassy bombing in Beirut was a double suicide bombing that occurred in front of the Iranian embassy in Beirut, Lebanon on 19 November 2013. The two bombings resulted in 23 deaths and injured at least 160 others.
This article lists a chronology of events in the South Thailand insurgency from the 1960s. Most take place in the Muslim-majority, contested provinces of Narathiwat, Pattani, and Yala in the far south of Thailand bordering Muslim Malaysia.
On 17 August 2015, a bombing took place inside the Erawan Shrine at the Ratchaprasong intersection in Pathum Wan District, Bangkok, Thailand, killing 20 people and injuring 125. Thai police were reported to have arrested two suspects, the second of whom confessed to having been the bomber. He later retracted his confession.
On 2 August 2019, series of small bombs have detonated over five locations throughout Bangkok Metropolitan Area. The blasts location included Chong Nonsi BTS Station, near the King Power Mahanakhon tower, the Chaengwattana Government Complex, the Royal Thai Armed Forces Headquarters, and inside a branch of Miniso; a utility goods store at Siam Square One. The blasts have resulted in total of seven injuries.