The Iranian man arrested in Thailand last year after blowing off his own legs in a foiled bomb attack has been sentenced to life in prison by a Bangkok court.
Saeid Moradi, 29, was found guilty of carrying explosives in public, using explosives in an attempt to kill officials and using explosives that caused the destruction of property. Six Thais—five civilians and one police officer—were injured by the bombs Moradi threw.
“Because attempted murder displays serious intent, the court sentences him to life in prison,” the judge said. Moradi could have received the death penalty under Thai law.
The second defendant, Mohammad Khazai, 43, was given a 15-year jail term for possession of explosives.
The charges were all criminal; the pair were not charged with terrorism offenses.
In Tehran, Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Araqchi hung his hat on that point. He said, “The accusations raised against these two people in the foreign new agencies [saying Thai officials believed the men were aiming to bomb Israeli diplomats] are not correct. The Thai government
and court have accused them of carrying explosives and using these materials against the police and inflicting damage on public places. There is no other accusation.”
Both men had denied all the charges. The pair were among five Iranians suspected of being involved in the blasts. Two are believed to have returned to Iran. The last accused was arrested in Malaysia and remains there while Thailand seeks his extradition.
The Thailand case erupted February 14 of last year and followed attacks the same day in India and Georgia targeting Israeli diplomats. Thai officials assume the Bangkok plot was also aimed at Israelis.
But the Bangkok bomb plot blew up, literally, before it could be carried out. An explosion tore the roof off a house in residential neighborhood. Security cameras caught the accused men fleeing the house separately soon afterward. Moradi was caught on film carrying one bomb in each hand.
Moradi tried to hail a taxicab. The driver refused to take him and Moradi then threw one of the bombs at the taxi, injuring the driver, eyewitnesses said.
As police closed in on him, Moradi apparently tried to hurl the second bomb at two police officers approaching him on the street. The second bomb appears to have hit something and bounced back, landing at Moradi’s feet and exploding. One leg was blown off and his second leg had to be amputated later.
The court heard that Khazai ran out of the house after the explosion and fled to the airport, where police arrested him at a boarding gate.
A suspected third member of the gang, Masud Sedaghatzadeh, 31, fled Thailand the day of the bombings, but was arrested in Malaysia, where he was trying to catch a connecting flight to Tehran. He is fighting extradition to Thailand.
Meanwhile, in Georgia, an Israeli embassy employee checking embassy cars that day found something strange on the underside of one and summoned security. They found a bomb attached by magnets to the car. No one has been arrested in that case.
The same day in New Delhi, two men riding a motorbike pulled up behind an Israeli embassy vehicle on the road and attached a magnetized bomb to its back, then drove off. The driver heard the sound of the magnets and shouted to evacuate the car. He got out safely. The one passenger in the car was the wife of the embassy defense attachÈ who was going to a school to pick up their children. She was seriously injured, but has survived.
An Indian man who worked with various Iranian news agencies has been arrested and charged with aiding the plot. His cellphone had calls to one of the Iranians charged in the Bangkok plot and to an Iranian who flew out of New Delhi hours after the bombing there and is the prime suspect as one of the men on the motorbike.
Israel accused Tehran of waging a terror campaign with the bombs. “This sentence proves once again that Iran is engaged in proliferation of terror all around the world,” Israeli ambassador Simon Roded told reporters after attending the Bangkok court hearing.
Coverage of the Bangkok trial was not seen in the Tehran media and was presumably censored by the authorities.
Last year, after the New Delhi bombing, the then-spokesman for the Iranian Foreign Ministry, Ramin Mehman-Parast, accused Israel of carrying out the bomb attack on the Israeli woman. He said, “Israeli agents are often the perpetrators of such terrorist acts.”
Moradi said he had discovered radios in a cabinet in the rented house. After one exploded and he realized they were bombs, he said he was in the process of carrying the other two out of the house with the intent of tossing them in a nearby canal to neutralize them.
Khazai testified that he had nothing to do with the bombs and didn’t even know Moradi until meeting him while they were boarding the flight in Teheran to Bangkok.