'Mad bomber' has Thais in tizz

2003-10-19 10:50

Bangkok - Thai authorities confirmed on Sunday that a mentally ill Canadian explosives expert was missing in Thailand but said they did not believe he posed a threat to the upcoming Apec summit.

Thai Interior Minister Wan Muhamad Nor Matha said that Montgomery Paisley, a 40-year-old military veteran who served in Afghanistan, was in the country on an expired visa.

But Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who is playing host to 21 Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation leaders Monday and Tuesday, downplayed the threat.

"It's nothing, he is a mentally ill person who has knowledge about explosives," he told reporters after meeting with US President George W Bush who launched a state visit on Sunday.

The Nation newspaper said the Canadian embassy alerted Thai officials after Paisley lost contact with his family in Canada.

"He is not a dangerous person," Thaksin said of Paisley, who authorities say entered the kingdom July 2 on a British Airways flight. "But Thai authorities are chasing him. He is sick and he may not know what he is doing."

Wan Nor said an official intelligence report concluded that Paisley "poses no problem because he is mentally ill."

But the revelation that he has gone missing in Thailand caused a stir in the media as APEC delegates converged on Bangkok under unprecedented security.

"He is still in Thailand, but we don't know his whereabouts," said Lieutenant General Jumpon Munmai, head of Thailand's National Intelligence Agency (NIA).

Jumpon rejected any connection between Paisley and groups such as terror network al-Qaeda, but expressed concern that ill-intentioned people may mislead him to use his bomb-making information.

"We do not think that information in his computer would be used to mount any incident, but in the long term it could be exploited," he said.

Southeast Asia's top terror suspect Hambali, accused of masterminding last year's Bali bombings which killed 202 people, was arrested in central Thailand with assistance of US agents in August.

- AFP