The FINANCIAL — According to CNN, the crew of a cargo plane, which is registered in Georgia, seized in Bangkok with tons of weapons from North Korea will be held in Thailand for 12 days for investigations, authorities said on December 14.
The five crew members on board the Ilyushin 76 cargo plane were arrested by Thai police during a refuelling stop at Don Muang airport on Saturday after an alleged tip-off from American officialsm, according to Telegraph. The men, from Kazakhstan and Belarus, were charged with the illegal possession of arms, but told investigators that they believed they were carrying oil-drilling equipment from the North Korean capital, Pyongyang.
According to the Thai News Agency, one crew member, Mikhail Petukhou, admitted to police during a six-hour investigation that the plane had begun its trip in Ukraine, before picking up its cargo in North Korea, as the same source reports. The plane made stops in Azerbaijan, the United Arab Emirates and Thailand on its way to Pyongyang and was due to stop twice in Bangkok and Sri Lanka before returning to the Ukraine, he claimed.
Thai authorities seized the Russian-made Ilyushin II-76 cargo aircraft on Dec. 12 after receiving tips from several different intelligence agencies, government spokesman Panitan Wattanayagorn said, according to Bloomberg. The plane, registered in the former Soviet republic of Georgia, was stopping for fuel before proceeding to Sri Lanka, he said. “Weapons experts will begin to unpack the cargo tomorrow,” Panitan said. The freight, most of which was still packed in unopened crates, contained rocket-propelled grenades, small arms and “major weapons components,” he said.
The government sought to charge the suspects with illegally possessing weapons and bringing them into the country, he said, as the same source reports. The UN Security Council in June approved a resolution that authorizes increased inspections of North Korean air or sea cargo suspected of containing material usable in the development of nuclear weapons or ballistic missiles.
The seizure of the cargo is the latest execution of rules imposed in June by the U.N. Security Council, according to New York Times. In September, South Korean authorities detained four cargo containers belonging to North Korea under the same U.N. resolution following Pyongyang's second nuclear test in May and claims to have made progress in enriching arms-grade uranium.
"There is little reliable information that comes out of North Korea," said Surachart Bamrungsuk, a security analyst at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, the same source reports. "The seizure may help put the pieces together and shed light on its arms trade, but there is still much that remains a mystery."
The Sri Lankan Ministry of Defence said there were no shipments scheduled in the country either by air or sea from North Korea, according to CNN. Such an aircraft could not have landed in any of Sri Lanka's airports without prior authorization, officials in Colombo said.
According to chosun.com, this incident is expected to damage North Korea's relations with the U.S. coming days after the visit of U.S. special representative for North Korea policy Stephen Bosworth to Pyongyang on Dec. 8.
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