Army places full confidence in GT 200
Story by Sumeth Parnpeth
It appears that the army still places full confidence and trust in the GT200 bomb detectors despite a series of six articles by a news team of the Isra News Agency since October exposing the flaws of the device and questioning its effectiveness. Also, the extensive news coverage has shaken several agencies concerned, the security agency in particular, to the extent that special training course were organized for field officers in the three restive southernmost provinces.
GT200 failed badly twice. The first was on October 6 when the device failed to detect a car bomb in the middle of Sungai-Kolok township which eventually exploded. The second incident was on the 19th of the same month in Pimolchai market in Yala’s Muang municipality when, again, the device failed to locate a motorcycle bomb.
Khunying Pornthip Rojanasunant, director of the Justice Ministry’s Institute of Forensic Science, said at a seminar organized by the news desk of the Isra Institute on November 15 that GT 200 was just a target-pointing tool used to narrow down the size of the suspected area to be searched. She said the device was not 100 percent accurate and, in order to be effective, it needed to be used along with other scientific equipments.
The Isra news team recently had an exclusive interview with Colonel Thaweesak Chantharasin, commander of the explosive ordnance disposal unit and the Anothai task force which was the first to introduce GT200 bomb detectors for use in the Deep South. The followings are excerpts of the interview.
Colonel Thaweesak attributed the failures of the bomb detector to human errors rather than on the device itself. He explained the physical fitness of the handler was crucial to the effectiveness of the GT 200. If the handler is tired after having worked non-stop for hours, there is a chance that the device will make a mistake “just like human beings who are tired or sick are more likely to make mistakes.”
“The effectiveness of GT 200 depends on how good the handler was trained in using the tool. A person who has never been trained will not able to use GT 200. It is not that you can use the tool at once when it is in your hands,” said the colonel.
He insisted all the officers tasked with handling GT 200 had been trained in using the tool for a certain period of time so they were familiar with it and could use it effectively.
Colonel admitted that he was invited by several House committees to show them how the device worked. In one of the exhibitions, he said with the help of GT 200, the device detected all three pieces of explosives hidden in the committee’s office. But when the device was handled by a representative of the committee, it failed to locate any explosives. “This means the effectiveness of the device depends heavily on the user.”
In another test, Colonel Thaweesak said the device located a small cache of ammunition hidden in a bag about three metres from Mr Somchai Paetprasert, chairman of the House military affairs committee.
He pointed out that most of the opinions questioning the effectiveness of GT 200 came from people who never handled the device. To dismiss the widespread misunderstanding about the device, he suggested that formal tests of the device should be held in the presence of those who still doubt the device.
The colonel also dismissed as not likely that people in contact with nitrate, a substance found in fertilizer, could be mistakenly detected by GT 200 and held in custody under suspicion of bomb making. He explained that officers handling the device usually used TNT sensor card inserted in the device to look for explosives thus it was impossible that the device would pick up the nitrate substance.
Hailing the effectiveness of GT 200, Colonel Thaweesak claimed that in one incident when he inspected a road checkpoint in Nong Chik district of Pattani, the device managed to locate 94 guns, both legal and illegal, within four hours of search.
Besides bomb detection, GT 200 could be used to sniff our narcotics. It can also be used to locate dead bodies. With the help of the device, he claimed that search team managed to locate victims of a helicopter crash about two years after the accident.
Since the introduction of GT 200, he claimed that the number of bombing incidents since last year had declined substantially.