Grenades, Ak-47 Found On Bangkok Bus

[webfact]

SECURITY

Transport firm to beef up security at Mo Chit Terminal

BANGKOK: -- Transport Company Limited has stepped up security at its terminals, in particular Mo Chit in Bangkok, after a bag containing hand grenades and an AK-47 assault rifle was found on an inter-provincial bus that arrived at the terminal crowded with passengers returning to the capital after a long holiday weekend.

The weapons were discovered on a bus arriving to the capital from the northeastern province of Nakhon Ratchasima. The terminal was packed with travellers returning to Bangkok at the end of Buddhist Lent holiday.

Transport Company's president Wuthichart Kalyanamitra said police received a tip and were on the alert to search and seize the arms the moment the bus arrived at the terminal.

However, the suspect was apparently aware of the move and fled the bus before it arrived at Mo Chit 2, leaving the police holding a bag of weapons but without a suspect in custody.

-- The Nation 2012-08-06

[kiniyow]

The owner must have conviently forgot his Bag stowed on the bus????

[pacovl46]

They should have kept quiet and asked the bus company to advertise that a lost bag had turned up - please call this number.

Really??? One thing is for sure, if you leave a bag on a bus it will be opened by staff. So, they'll know what's in the bag. Therefore you'd have to be really <<Snip!>> stupid to go back and ask for it or call any number regarding the collection of a lost bag.

Edited August 6, 2012 by metisdead
: Profanity.

[webfact]

SMUGGLING OF WEAPONS

Suspect in weapons case transferred buses after first broke down, police told

The Nation

NAKHON RATCHASIMA: -- Police are checking security cameras at Nakhon Ratchasima's main bus terminal, the departure point of an inter-provincial bus loaded with war weapons, in a bid to find the owner of the AK-47 rifles and hand grenades.

Chatchai Yuwachit of Nakhon Ratchasima transport office said the terminal was equipped with 40 cameras and it is hoped that one of them may have captured the individual who put the war weapons onto the bus.

Police found the weapons on the bus when it arrived at Mo Chit Bus Terminal in Bangkok on Sunday.

The weapons seized included one AK-47 rifle, 209 rounds of ammunitions, two M-67 and two M-61 grenades, four M-14 anti-personnel mines as well as two type 67 and one type 82.2 hand grenades. All of them were intact.

Chatchai said the investigation could take some time as the terminal was very crowded because of the long holiday weekend.

The initial investigation showed that the owner of the luggage loaded with weapons appeared to have carried it onto the bus at Nakhon Ratchasima terminal, rather than loading it in the bus's baggage compartment, meaning that he or she did not pass the bus firm's registration system.

It was also discovered that the bus on which the weapons were found was not the original bus that departed Nakhon Ratchasima bound for Bangkok but one that came to pick up passengers when the original bus broke down near a monument in the Don Muang area.

Anong Deejantuek, a hostess on the spare bus, told police that the owner of the suitcase was a man of around 30 with closely cropped hair. He was 170cm tall, and wore a short-sleeve shirt. She said during the transfer she saw the man with the luggage, which he put under the bus.

The man then climbed into the bus and sat in the back seat. "I asked the man where he would get off and he said at Wat Samiennari. When I said the bus did not stop there, he said nothing. When the bus arrived at Mo Chit Terminal, he got off the bus without the luggage, so I became suspicious. The luggage was very heavy, so I alerted police," she said.

-- The Nation 2012-08-06

[whybother]

Transport firm to beef up security at Mo Chit Terminal

Why? When:

Police are checking security cameras at Nakhon Ratchasima's main bus terminal, the departure point of an inter-provincial bus loaded with war weapons, in a bid to find the owner of the AK-47 rifles and hand grenades.

[TomTao]

I saw something on the news tonight, looks like there may be some cctv footage of the owner of the bag buying his ticket. If it is the owner of the bag the police will have a lead to some tea money investigate.

[ableguy]

maybe someone was planning to be at the court this week to help Jatuporn (King Kong).

Of course! Maybe they'd plant the mines in strategic locations to keep the yellowshirts away............

What we need is a crack down on people who want to plant mines? did they vow to do this already ? Thaksin of course would have caught them by now, tried them and hanged them.

[Tanlic]

It's just a move to "normalise" searches and xrays of bus luggage.

Come on, get real, why would someone abandon the bag just because the bus breaks down.. it's just stupid. It's like the time someone left a bag containing millions of baht of drugs on a bus... oh yea, right.

It's no different to someone turning up on a plane with bomb in his shoe or underpants really! It's a mechanism to get us all used to the idea that we need to be searched and subjected to security.. for our own benefit of course.

Use your imagination.....there you are sitting on a bus for hours your mind going at a million miles an hour wondering if you are going to be caught...suddenly the bus breaks down or has it?......Would you sit there cool as a cucumber or is there a chance your imagination would get the better of you, your little bum would start tweaking and panic would set in?

Dead easy sitting at your computer to say the guy was stupid but it would appear his six sense was right.....he hasn't been found but you on the other hand being Mr Cool would be dubbed up in the Bangkok Hilton by now.

[sunkist]

Police claim they were aware and waiting....exactly what anyone would say afterwards. No assurance that anyone was on the bus. Can put on as freight and leave for someone else to pick up. Seems if mines and grenades were involved you would act quickly and before bus gets into busy terminal....or passenger gets away.

[Buchholz]

screen capture of Video News linked here:

http://www.newsplus.co.th/NewsDetail.php?id=50231

Edited August 6, 2012 by Buchholz

[thequietman]

screen capture of Video News linked here:

http://www.newsplus....il.php?id=50231

all 3 guys smiling and laughing. they dont seem too bothered. Police plant perhaps to be released later after cameras are turned off.

[khun graham]

what no finger prints?????????????someone knows??????????come on own up the suspence is killing me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[hellodolly]

They should have kept quiet and asked the bus company to advertise that a lost bag had turned up - please call this number.

Just because they left a bad full of weapons on a bus doesn't mean they would be stupid enough to fall for tha.... oh, wait, never mind

I think the writer tried to under play where they were coming from when he mentioned the South.

Lets face it they were coming in from northeast Thailand. Not the south. Two different kinds of lunatics. And as we all know northeast Thailand is not exactly a hot bed of high intelligence.

[RichardinBKK]

Or it was somebody who left them there and somebody else would retrieve them in Bangkok, in which case the bus driver is in on it.

Note to self...Move to Phuket.

[Docno]

They should have kept quiet and asked the bus company to advertise that a lost bag had turned up - please call this number.

Just because they left a bad full of weapons on a bus doesn't mean they would be stupid enough to fall for tha.... oh, wait, never mind

I think the writer tried to under play where they were coming from when he mentioned the South.

Lets face it they were coming in from northeast Thailand. Not the south. Two different kinds of lunatics. And as we all know northeast Thailand is not exactly a hot bed of high intelligence.

Your use of the term, "intelligence", in this context speaks volumes about your knowledge of the Northeast and it's people as well as your own ...

[dighambara]

Now who are the only people so poor that they have to travel on buses? Clearly carried by Thaksin.

Now who are the only people so poor that they have to travel on buses? Clearly carried by Thaksin.

Me for one. I often take the bus from Klong Lan to Bangkok. First class travel in a relatively new bus, free snack and free lunch and all for 286 baht. Sleep when I want, traffic jams no problems for me, no parking problems, the BiB don't sneak out and ask for tea money. A much simpler way to travel 400 km each way.

Marvelous - Thailand, a country with stricter gun laws than anywhere in the USA - where almost anyone can own a gun, but Thailand has nearly double the gun violence of the USA - in total... It would seem ownershop of guns has no relationship to gun violence...

[webfact]

Arms cache linked to man on bus

The Nation

BANGKOK: -- The war weapons in an arms cache uncovered on Sunday at Mor Chit bus terminal in Bangkok may have been those issued to military or police units, a senior police officer said yesterday.

Footage from security cameras at a bay where buses from Nakhon Ratchasima pull in had not detected any suspect, but the driver of bus number 22-77 said a 175 cm tall man wearing a black jacket could be of interest. Eyewitnesses based in Nakhon Ratchasima later told police that a man dragged the bag containing the items to place it near the bus before he bought a ticket.

Pol Colonel Naphat Jullabussapa speculated that the war weapons were active and could have been issued to military or police units. He said they may have been for delivery to buyers and could have been connected to the armed insurgency in the deep South. The courier’s behaviour was not composed and it may suggest he was a new hand at the arms trade movement, he added.

The first man, also standing at around 175 and having curly hair, later met with a man wearing a short-sleeved plaid shirt, who later left. The first man told bus conductors to place the bag in the bus’ internal compartment, before he boarded the vehicle and sat in Seat 8D. Police said they would work out a sketch of this man relying on eyewitnesses’ accounts and later seek a court warrant based on the sketch.

The bus number 22-77 broke down at a monument off Vibhavadi Rangsit near Don Mueang airport, and another bus numbered 21-124, belonging to Ratchasima Tours, picked the man up along with a few other passengers, police said. The man did not show up at the Mor Chit terminal, as he may have got off along the way with other passengers, police say, leaving the weapons-stuffed bag on the first bus.

The weapons items were an AK-47 assault rifle with two fully-loaded magazines and other munitions, 12 hand grenades of various types and an anti-personnel mine.

Deputy Prime Minister Chalerm Yoobamrung said there were a large number of weapons left over from wars in Vietnam and Cambodia at large in Thailand, and Sunday’s uncovering may have been a part of them.

-- The Nation 2012-08-07

[Katipo]

They should have kept quiet and asked the bus company to advertise that a lost bag had turned up - please call this number.

Just because they left a bad full of weapons on a bus doesn't mean they would be stupid enough to fall for tha.... oh, wait, never mind

I think the writer tried to under play where they were coming from when he mentioned the South.

Lets face it they were coming in from northeast Thailand. Not the south. Two different kinds of lunatics. And as we all know northeast Thailand is not exactly a hot bed of high intelligence.

Your use of the term, "intelligence", in this context speaks volumes about your knowledge of the Northeast and it's people as well as your own ...

If by 'lacking high intelligence' one meant the individuals being referred to had received a failed education from a corrupt education that meant they remained at the bottom of a cultural class system that perpetuates inequality at all levels of society I think he is right.

[morpheusatloppers]

In my day, people just used to leave brollies on buses...

[bendejo]

Hey, guy just wants to do a little hunting and dynamite fishing, what's wrong with that?

Something not right. These things are heavy and dense, it would have been noticeable to anyone who handled the bag.

The bus breaking down within several km of the terminal -- not impossible, but suspicious.

Otherwise, I can't figure out why the find was even reported, that the BiB didn't just collect the evidence, never to mentioned again...