How Iran orchestrated bombings in India, Thailand and Georgia

The Guardian reveals evidence linking a Feb. 13 car bombing in Delhi, attempted car bombing in Tbilisi the same day and massive explosion in Bangkok house the following day to each other, and to Iran.

Dan Lavie and Israel Hayom Staff

 

 

British newspaper The Guardian revealed on Sunday new evidence pointing to a correlation between three attacks — in India, Thailand and Georgia — earlier this year. The three attacks are believed to have been perpetrated by Iran. The new details confirm that all the individuals involved in the planning of the attacks had reached their respective destinations at approximately the same time.

Scene of a car bombing in Delhi in February. | Photo credit: AP

Scene of a car bombing in Delhi in February. - Photo: AP

On Feb. 13, the car carrying the wife of the Israeli Defense Ministry attaché in India Tal Yehoshua Koren went up in flames in the middle of a Delhi street. Both the occupants, Yehoshua Koren and her driver, were hurt. That same day, an employee of the Israeli embassy in Georgia discovered an explosive device attached to an Israeli diplomat’s vehicle in Tbilisi (the device was neutralized and no one was hurt). The following day, a Bangkok house was destroyed in a massive blast, blamed on Iran.

The attacks are believed to have been a retaliation for the systematic assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists in the preceding months.

According to the Guardian, though the masterminds of the plots have not been apprehended, the authorities in Delhi and Bangkok know when the preparations began. For example, Houshang Afshar Irani, the man accused of the Delhi bombing, first arrived in the Indian capital on April 25, 2011, and left in mid-May that same year. Investigators believe that Irani was scoping out potential locations for the attack.

Several days earlier, on April 17, 2011, 31-year-old Lilah Rohani arrived in Thailand on a tourist visa. Rohani was the one who, in December of the previous year, had rented the house that eventually became a “bomb factory” — the Thai police revealed.

This is where the connection to the third attack comes in: Irani’s mobile phone number, which he used during his stay in Delhi during April of 2011, was found to have been used in Tbilisi for a two-week period in June, tying the attempted bomb plot in Georgia to the other two incidents.

Another piece of the puzzle that served to link the incidents to one another was the arrest of a 31-year-old Iranian identified as Sedaghatzadeh Masoud at the Kuala Lumpur airport on the morning of Feb. 15, who was awaiting a flight to Tehran. The man’s passport contained visas to both India and Thailand and he carried a notebook in which phone numbers belonging to suspects in all three incidents, including some in Tehran, were found.

View original Israel Hayom publication at: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=4724