This piece taken from The Star Online. A depressing report in some ways, but there are signs that the message is beginning to sink in with some in Thailand at least.
Thursday September 13, 2012
Hundreds jailed by 'fake' bomb detectors in Thai south
YALA, Thailand: Implicated by the wand of a "bogus" bomb
detector, Hassan became one of hundreds detained in Thailand's
insurgency-racked south because of equipment that experts say is
useless.
Scandal over the Thai army's use of the GT200 detectors
has deepened rancour towards the authorities in the Muslim-majority
border region, where nearly 5,300 people have died in an eight-year
conflict that shows no sign of abating.
Human rights activists
say more than 400 people have been locked up - some for up to two years -
on the basis of spurious evidence gleaned by the device, which is at
the centre of a British fraud probe.
"I was playing football at
my school when someone shot at soldiers nearby," said Hassan, who was
held for 29 days without charge over the 2008 incident in Yala province -
a hot-bed of violence.
"The soldiers entered the school looking
for the gunman. They lined us up and used the GT200. The antenna pointed
to me... and they took me away," he added, asking for his identity to
be withheld because he fears reprisals for speaking out over his
detention.
Billed as being able to detect minute traces of
explosives, gun powder and even drugs, the GT200 is the army's main
detection tool.
The hand-held device, which is claimed to be
powered by the user's static electricity rather than a battery, is
advertised as using a substance-detecting "sensor card" inside a plastic
handle to trigger a twitch of its antenna in the direction of
explosives.
Evidence debunking the powers of the GT200 - sold by
Britain-based Global Technical Ltd - has long been in circulation, with
experts describing it as little more than a radio aerial stuck on a
useless piece of plastic despite the company's claims that it can detect
explosives from hundreds of metres away.
In July the man behind
the GT200 was charged in Britain with "dishonestly representing" the
device as "capable of detecting explosives".
Several other
British businessmen are awaiting trial for selling similarly defunct
equipment around the world - including to Iraq.
A Thai government
probe concluded the device works only 25 percent of the time, a success
rate critics attribute to nothing more than random chance.
"Tossing
a coin would be more accurate," said Angkhana Neelapaijit, of the
Justice for Peace foundation, which uncovered the scandal.
"People
in the south knew the GT200 was fake from the first time it was used"
in 2007, she said. "But the Thai authorities refused to listen... all
trust in the government and army has been lost."
Thailand's highest investigating agency is now mulling legal action against Global Technical and its Thai distributors.
But
the powerful military has refused to concede it was duped over its
rumoured $20 million acquisition, or apologise to those held in what
rights groups say is a flagrant miscarriage of justice.
Hassan said he was threatened and interrogated in detention and forced to point out friends from a school photograph.
Among
them was Ayub who said he was arrested with no further evidence and
held for two years before he was freed without a conviction or an
apology.
"I'm so angry. They took two years away from me but I am
scared it can happen again," Ayub told AFP, also asking for his
identity to be protected.
He said he now carries the stigma of
having been accused of links to the militants, who are believed to want
greater autonomy and kill both Buddhists and Muslims in near-daily bomb
or gun attacks.
The Thai army refutes accusations of arbitrary detentions based on the faulty device.
"We
found real evidence - guns, weapons, grenades - that's why we arrested
them," Colonel Pramote Promin, deputy spokesman for the Internal
Security Operations Command said, addressing the wider issue of
detentions.
"It might be a hallucination but we found (weapons)
many times. It might be a fluke or coincidence that it worked," he said,
adding that the effectiveness could be "something above science".
Despite
his endorsement, the army appears to have stopped mass round-ups of men
for "wanding" by the device, which were commonplace between 2007 and
2010, according to locals in Yala and Pattani provinces.
But
soldiers still check cars and roadsides with the device, raising fears
its continued use is exposing the security forces - and civilians they
are supposed to protect - to greater risks.
"It's a big scandal,"
said Jessada Denduangboripant, a biologist at Bangkok's Chulalongkorn
University who was one of the first Thai experts to question the device.
He
is sceptical that a probe by Thailand's top investigative body will
apportion blame to the "powerful people" behind the purchase of the
detector.
But as long as authorities refuse to admit fault,
victims will continue to be denied justice, said Kaosar Aleemama of the
Muslim Attorney Centre, which represents Hassan and Ayub.
"These
people have never heard someone say 'I am sorry' for taking their
freedom," she added. "It is an issue of human dignity." - AFP
Colonel Pramote Promin sounds like he has been taking lessons in BS from Major General al Jabiri, the ex-head of the bomb squad in Iraq who was responsible for purchasing the ADE651, when he says:
the effectiveness could be "something above science".
A most interesting concept don't you think? It leaves me wondering what he could possibly mean? Some might say that something above science is money. I could not possibly comment.
