The following news story gives some background on the 1991 terrorist alert in Bangkok, January-February 1991. The story remains copyright, but the author has granted his permission to carry it on Newsean for all users to read and, if they wish, to comment.

Scarlet 7 spent 15 months in Thailand before heading back to Iraq last week. But instead of the violence he planned to leave in his wake, he earned a reputation as leader of The Gang That Couldn't Spy Straight.

Salim N. Al-jibouri, the high-living, debt-ridden, self-styled leader of the Palestinian Commandos, made it far easier than it might have been to thwart plans to bring the Gulf war to Southeast Asia. The effective end of his story came when he voluntary left Bangkok for home via Malaysia.

Security forces involved in uncovering his plots against peace in Bangkok learned that Al-jibouri planned attacks against several foreign embassies, as well as hotels and nightspots frequented by foreigners. But he was defeated by his own magnificent mistakes.

By the time security agencies in Bangkok were ready to confront him, the 31-year-old Iraqi diplomat:

• was deeply in debt from almost nightly rounds of drinking and frequenting prostitutes in Bangkok's so-called Little Arabia;

   

• had compromised himself with an attempt to try to recruit a Thai citizen to spy on a friendly third country;

   

• had completely blown his cover as “third secretary, commercial” at the Pradipat Road embassy of Iraq by his spending and apparent love for his distinctive, unique red Mazda RX-7 sports car, and, the greatest sin of all in his business,

   

• had been co-opted by the embassy of a friendly Middle East country to tell of his work in planning violence in Thailand.

Security sources said Al-jibouri's clumsiness in basic spycraft made cracking his so-called Palestinian Commandos easier than they had hoped. “Basically, the man was shoddy,” said one source.

How bad a spy was he?

The night before he left Thailand, Mr Al-jibouri started a bonfire in the backyard of his Paholyothin Road apartment house, apparently to burn incriminating papers. The next morning, security agents picked up a boxload of unburned papers from the cold fire.

The papers, including marked Bangkok maps and lists of establishments popular with foreigners, confirmed for investigators what they already knew: a security alert issued January 19 helped prevent possible violence in Bangkok.

“Al-jibouri was planning terror attacks or a campaign in Bangkok in order to focus some of the heat of the (Gulf) war publicity elsewhere,” said one source familiar with the case.

The Iraqi agent was questioned by authorities after they uncovered the ring, and he provided enough information to allow police to pick up five other suspects. In addition, he confirmed that a second Iraqi embassy diplomat, Muzir Darie Razoki, was his partner.

Razoki, who also left Thailand “voluntarily” with Al-jibouri, was identified as one of several Iraqi intelligence agents expelled from the United States last August in the wake of the invasion of Kuwait. He was immediately reassigned to Bangkok, apparently as Al-jibouri's immediate boss.

It was from Razoki's home, in the same Soi Aree 5 apartment complex as Al-jibouri, that alleged members of the “Palestinian Commandos” received guns, grenades and TNT. The delivery sparked the actual anti- terrorism alert in Thailand, and was the specific “credible source” cited by the US State Department in a warning to American citizens.

Although the two diplomats and five other Arabs have been identified — and all but one have left Thailand — the whereabouts of the weapons remains unknown. For this reason, some security officials have been reluctant to call off the general anti-terrorist alert in Bangkok.

The Gang That Couldn't Spy Straight was broken, however, because Al- jibouri was such a poor intelligence agent. He made so many mistakes that a casual reader of spy novels would be hard-pressed to believe his story.

In a trade where anonymity is a virtue, Al-jibouri was the man you couldn't forget.

He travelled everywhere in his distinctive scarlet car — the source, perhaps, for his Mukhabarat codename.

He not only did his boozing and womanising in the Little Arabia area of Soi Nana, but he insisted on meeting his secret contacts in the same place, time after time.

While his pregnant wife and a son who was chronically ill because of Bangkok pollution sat at home, Al-jibouri was the high-profile man who liked to take two prostitutes with him each time.

When his own money ran out, he began to use operational funds from the intelligence agency to support his high living. When that wasn't enough, he signed the tab.

Al-jibouri had lingering debts in several bars and restaurants along his night life routes.

Security sources have refused to provide details, but available information leads to the conclusion it was his debts which made it possible for another country to exploit him. The sources also have refused to identify the country whose Bangkok-based officials got information from Al-jibouri, except to say it was “a country friendly to Thailand.”

But one source said Al-jibouri's fatal mistake was to try to recruit a member of this unidentified embassy in his own scheme.

“He didn't just fail here,” said the source. “He crashed and burned. They (the third country) turned him to work for them instead.”

His boss in Iraq will be unlikely to rate Mr Al-jibouri's Bangkok assignment as a good career move.

In addition to the debts, bad reputation and security breaches he left behind for other Iraqis to try to clear up, there also is the question of at least five Arabs he put in jail by revealing their details to others.

“He is a clumsy man,” said one source.

“He'll have to explain all this when he gets to Baghdad. I'd like to hear how he reports how it wasn't really his fault. He'll have to blame it on someone else for sure.”