Word: thais
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...country's borders as "ridiculous" and "fabrications" by "crazy people." The Prime Minister may now be rethinking those words because a chain of arrests of suspected Jemaah Islamiah (JI) operatives over the past month in Thailand and in neighboring Cambodia has exposed a potentially virulent terrorist cell operating on Thai soil. In southern Thailand last week, police arrested three Thai nationals, allegedly JI members, accused of plotting a series of Bali-style car-bomb attacks on five embassies?American, Australian, British, Israeli and Singaporean?in Bangkok. According to police, the group also intended to hit soft targets in the city...
...Thai agents were investigating possible domestic JI operations as early as January 2002, when one of the country's most senior intelligence officials was alerted by his counterparts in Singapore to the presence of suspected JI operatives in southern Thailand. Acting on the scoop, the official dispatched field agents to the porous southern border town of Sungai Kolok to check assertions that four JI members had fled through Malaysia and into southern Thailand, a Muslim stronghold in a predominantly Buddhist country. He didn't expect the agents to find much. But when they combed through embarkation cards of individuals...
...does now. Mas Selamat was captured in Indonesia in February. Information gleaned from his subsequent interrogation in Singapore triggered the recent arrest of the three Thais. The network exposed by Thai authorities now reveals that, despite Thaksin's initial assurances to the contrary, Thailand has played unwitting host to JI regional operatives...
...According to Thailand's deputy police commissioner, General Sunthorn Saikwan, Arifin had links to a terror cell busted in Cambodia's capital, Phnom Penh, in May. During that sweep, police arrested two Thais?both from the south?and an Egyptian, and followed that up on June 11 with the capture of a Cambodian believed to be a member of the same cell. The Thai and Egyptian men were teachers at an Islamic school funded by the Saudi charity Om al-Qura. The charity is believed to have been used by al-Qaeda to fund its own activities and those...
...Thaksin's change of heart was fortuitously timed. Last week's arrest of the three Thai nationals?medical doctor Waemahadi Wae-dao, 41, Islamic teacher Maisuri Haji Abdullah, 50, and his son Muyahi Haji Doloh, 21?took place on the eve of Thaksin's meeting with Bush in Washington. During the meeting Thaksin promised Bush full cooperation in the war against terrorism. "There is no longer any ambiguity in our policy," says Prapat. "We are now involved...