Pressure mounts on Thai junta over fake bomb detectors

Thailand's powerful military has refused to concede it was duped over its rumoured $20 million acquisition of the GT200 - dubbed a 'magic wand' that can detect particles of explosives, but was in fact a home-made plastic box with a radio antenna.

A Thai soldier using a GT200 detector as he patrols the streets of Yala, in Thailand's restive south on March 2, 2010. Activists on June 27, 2016 urged Britain to hand over details of the multimillionShow more

Bangkok // Activists on Monday urged Britain to hand over to Thailand details of the multimillion-dollar sale of fake bomb detectors that led to the detention of scores of innocent people.

British fraudster Gary Bolton was jailed in 2013 for making millions selling the GT200 – which he billed as a “magic wand” able to detect tiny particles of explosives or drugs from hundreds of metres away.

It was in fact a useless home-made plastic box with a radio antenna – made for US$6 (Dh22) but sold for between $3,300-$13,000 per unit to governments including Thailand, Mexico and Iraq.

On Monday, the leader of Thailand’s pro-democracy ‘Red Shirt’ street movement, Jatuporn Prompan, urged the British embassy in Bangkok to share details of contracts between Bolton’s firm and the kingdom’s officials.

“Particularly the contracts of broker companies which sold them [GT200] to the Thai government and how much they cost,” he said in a YouTube post.

A corruption probe into why the Thai military and several other departments bought the device despite expert advice has ground to a halt.

Thailand’s army chief at the time was Anupong Paojinda, the current interior minister and an architect of the 2014 coup that restored the military to power, toppling the Red Shirts’ hero Yingluck Shinawatra.

Mr Anupong repeatedly defended the use of the fake detector even as tests cast serious doubt over its efficacy.

In 2010, the year the GT200 was officially banned from export by British authorities, he said that “we don’t have a replacement yet so we continue to use it”.

Last week, prime minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha, a senior general during Mr Anupong’s tenure as army chief, said the device was “useful once ... but when they were proven to be useless they were not used anymore”.

Rights groups say hundreds of people were detained in Thailand’s restive south after erroneous findings of traces of explosives by security officers using the GT200.

“Regardless of court rulings in the UK and overwhelming scientific evidence, Thai military leadership still defend the use of GT200,” said Sunai Phasuk of Human Rights Watch Asia.

He said the first sales took place in 2005, ultimately amounting to orders of nearly 1,400 GT200s worth $32 million across 15 separate agencies.

Mr Sunai called for a probe into possible loss of life and the “large numbers of wrongful arrests” due to the use of the bogus equipment.

The powerful military refuses to concede it was duped over its rumoured $20 million acquisition, or apologise to those held in what rights groups call a flagrant miscarriage of justice.

* Agence France-Presse