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But while from a security standpoint I can see the sense in having a self-destruct device for a safe that might contain highly sensitive information, I have to wonder about how this all happened.
Palestinian Foreign Minister Riad Malki said no foul play was suspected, noting that the safe had been left untouched for more than 20 years.
...
The safe was recently moved from the old embassy building, but it had come from a building that used to house the Palestinian Liberation Organization's offices in the 1980s, Malki said.
It was not immediately clear how Malki knew the safe had been untouched for more than 20 years or why and when the safe would have been booby-trapped.
"The ambassador wanted to know what is in the safe," Malki said. "He opened it and asked his wife to bring a paper and a pen to write down the contents of the safe. She left him to bring (the) pen and paper. During that time, she heard the sound of an explosion."
JustMike
reply to post by ketsuko
No worries. As I said, it's no biggie. :thumbs up:
As for the posting: yes. Prague's one of the nice little postings for Embassy staff to get. It's bang in the middle of Europe, so it's only a quick flight to some key cities like Vienna and Berlin, and even London's only two hours away. The city's Old Town is just beautiful and it's generally pretty peaceful here as well.
So, it's a good place to post an Ambassador if you want them to have a quiet time and not risk them creating too much strife, even if they do something rather undiplomatic.
Within limits, that is.
However, in perspective, if an event like this happened in London or DC or one of the other plum diplomatic postings, we'd likely be seeing a lot more about it in the international MSM -- and hence on the boards here. But Prague is just a nice little backwater on the diplomatic scene, so most of John and Joan Public won't pay much heed to this.
That doesn't affect the way various nations may be reacting to it, though. Taking the analogy of the swan gliding across the water, we won't even see the near-frenzied damage control that's probably going on behind the scenes right now.
Damage control? Near-frenzied? JustMike's gone nuts, right?
Maybe I have, but look at it this way: if a safe in a Palestinian diplomat's private residence in sleepy old Prague had an explosive device in it, what may we surmise about safes in various other diplomats' homes in far, far more important places?
Are we seriously expected to believe that they don't have something similar elsewhere, and nor does anyone else?
In my first post in this thread I stated:
But while from a security standpoint I can see the sense in having a self-destruct device for a safe that might contain highly sensitive information, I have to wonder about how this all happened.
In other words, having an Ambassador's safe security protected did not surprise me. Not one bit. It makes sense to me. That doesn't mean I like the idea, especially the rather extreme way this was possibly done. But not liking something and admitting its likelihood are quite different things.
Some might protest that it's incredibly risky to rig a bomb in a safe, it's James Bond 007 movie stuff, it's illegal to "mantrap" and so on. Those arguments, while perfectly reasonable, just don't matter -- not to the people who make decisions about such things. I very much doubt the late Ambassador simply decided to set up some explosives in his safe. Almost certainly, that decision came from higher up.
Sad but true, secrets can be much more valuable to certain PTB than people's lives or mere local laws.
We might like to think, "My nation would never do such a thing!" but I feel we'd be sadly mistaken. Virtually every nation will do whatever it takes to protect sensitive information.
Okay, so I'm surmising, but I don't think it's entirely beyond the realms of possibility that some other nations use similar measures to "protect" secrets. So, my feeling is there may have been some very urgent comms going on today, and not only between various Palestinian missions or embassies and their ministry, but possibly other nations' as well.
Swills
Hey JustMike, any news on this story from the local outlets? Right now I'm reading there was a large cache of weapons found. All sources but the one below say they cannot confirm what weapons were discovered.
respekt.ihned.cz...edit on 2-1-2014 by Swills because: (no reason given)
Prague, Jan 3 (ČTK) —Palestine's embassy should move away from Prague-Suchdol because diplomats illegally kept arms and explosives in the embassy's future seat, violating both Czech and international law, Prague-Suchdol Mayor Petr Hejl said today.
The Prague-Suchdol Town Hall has called on the Czech Foreign Ministry to move the Palestinian Embassy away from its territory.
Czech Police discovered unregistered weapons in the embassy building in connection with an explosion that caused the death of Palestinian Ambassador Jamal Al Jamal on Wednesday.
First Deputy Foreign Minister Jiří Schneider told Hejl today that he shares the fears of the city neighborhood.
"Deputy minister Schneider spoke to Mr Hejl today and told him that the Foreign Ministry shares the fears and is ready to discuss the situation," ministry spokeswoman Johana Grohová told ČTK.
Swills
reply to post by YouSir
Here's his Wikipedia, if he was affiliated with Hamas I think it would have been mentioned. He's apart of the PLO, and the PLO and Hamas don't get along because the PLO in the early 90's recognized Israel's right to exist and is no longer considered a terrorist organization by the US/Israel.
en.wikipedia.org...
The Doha deal, signed by Mahmoud Abbas and Khaled Mashal in February 2012, was described as a step forward in the stalled implementation of the Palestinian reconciliation agreement, signed in Cairo in April 2011.
In March 2012, Mahmoud Abbas stated that there were no political differences between Hamas and Fatah as they had reached agreement on a joint political platform and on a truce with Israel. Commenting on relations with Hamas, Abbas revealed in an interview with Al-Jazeera that "We agreed that the period of calm would be not only in the Gaza Strip, but also in the West Bank," adding that "We also agreed on a peaceful popular resistance [against Israel], the establishment of a Palestinian state along the 1967 borders and that the peace talks would continue if Israel halted settlement construction and accepted our conditions."