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| Southeast Asia |
| Thailand detains plane with weapons cache from North Korea |
| 2009-12-12 |
| THAI authorities have detained five people who landed in Bangkok in an east European cargo plane full of heavy weapons that originated in North Korea. The plane's pilot asked to land at Bangkok's domestic Don Mueang airport on Saturday morning, and on inspecting the aircraft Thai officials found the cache, government spokesman Panitan Wattanayakorn said. "An eastern European airline asked to land this morning at Don Mueang airport to refuel its tank. When Thai authorities examined the aircraft they found a lot of weapons and detained up to five people," Panitan said. He later said the weapons had been transferred to Takhli Air Force base in the central Thai province of Nakhon Sawan. Lieutenant General Thangai Prasajaksattru, commander of Thailand's Central Investigation Bureau, confirmed that five men from eastern Europe had been detained, but he did not yet know their nationalities. "There were a lot of weapons such as rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs), missiles and other war weapons," he said. National television channels reported that four of the detained men are from Kazakhstan and one is from Belarus, and said that US officials had tipped off Thai authorities before they found the cache. But a spokesman for the US Embassy in Bangkok, Michael Turner, said he was unaware of the incident. Air Force spokesman Captain Montol Suchookorn and special branch police said the chartered cargo plane originated in North Korea's capital Pyongyang. "According to my information, the flight originated from North Korea. It was a cargo flight that requested to land at the civilian side of the airport," Montol said, adding that the Air Force was continuing to guard the aircraft. AOT, Thailand's aviation authority, said Don Mueang airport remained open to passengers. |
| Posted by:tipper |
| #5 Crosspatch - very thoughtful, but why not Burma? I thought the Nkors were in cahoots in some ways with Burma, and certainly the burmese are more approachable? Also, why Sri Lanka has the destination? Are they still under embargo, and having own their war couldn't they simply wait a bit for resupply - OR, would this have been a LTTE order? Good to see the embassy is out of the loop for now. |
| Posted by: Halliburton - Mysterious Conspiracy Division 2009-12-12 11:13 |
| #4 "they might have decided to have an "emergency" refueling making a bet the airport there would simply top them off and allow them on their way without asking a lot of questions" Oops. :-D |
| Posted by: Barbara Skolaut 2009-12-12 10:06 |
| #3 Not so much interested in where it was going as to why it took off without enough fuel to get to its destination. The pilot requested emergency refueling in Bangkok. That airport is 2300 nautical miles from Pyongyang. Maximum range of an Il-76 is 1970 nautical miles with full payload. 40 tons of arms is about half payload. So this looks like either a "planned emergency" or they couldn't make it to their planned refuel stop. Speculation is the destination of the plane was Sri Lanka or Pakistan. The plane would not have been able to make it non-stop to either destination from Pyongyang. So they either had a refueling planned for somewhere else and couldn't make it for some reason, they planned all along to have an "emergency" in Bangkok, they were shorted on their fuel load in Pyongyang, or the pilot intentionally dumped some fuel to create an emergency. My guess is they planned all along to have an "emergency". Rather than file required paperwork and plan for a stop in Bangkok and possibly have to answer inconvenient questions about the nature of their flight, they might have decided to have an "emergency" refueling making a bet the airport there would simply top them off and allow them on their way without asking a lot of questions. Nice work in any case. |
| Posted by: crosspatch 2009-12-12 07:36 |
| #2 Any idea where the plane was going? |
| Posted by: Thing From Snowy Mountain 2009-12-12 05:56 |
| #1 some spy earned their pay with that catch |
| Posted by: Frank G 2009-12-12 11:33 |