FOR months three Iranian men meticulously planned a terrorist attack in Bangkok, making trips to the country, obtaining C-4 explosives and laying a trail of coded stickers, apparently to mark their escape route.
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According to Thai authorities, the men were key figures in a plot to attack Israeli diplomats amid intensifying hostility between the countries. But within hours of their arrival in Thailand on February 8, they were cavorting with sex workers and drinking alcohol in the seedy resort city of Pattaya.
For five days the men partied in the city best known for its raunchy go-go bars. Mohammad Khazaei, 42, Saeid Moradi, 27, and Masoud Sedaghatzadeh, 30, blended easily among Middle Eastern sex tourists who frequent Pattaya's Arab quarter.
Khazaei befriended a Thai woman called Nan, in her late 20s, asking her to stay with him during his time in Pattaya because she spoke good English. He asked her to arrange female companions for his two friends, which she did.
The men had checked into the six-storey Top Thai Hotel on the evening of February 8. Khazaei and Sedaghatzadeh had flown in that day from Kuala Lumpur, via Phuket.
Ms Nan took a photograph on her mobile phone of the men with two women in an Arabian-themed restaurant, where they drank beer and smoked hookah pipes. She told police the men's behaviour did not appear unusual. However, Ms Nan said that on one occasion Khazaei prevented her opening a cupboard in his room where he had a large suitcase and backpacks, according to a transcript of her interview with police obtained by the Bangkok Post newspaper.
The men checked out of the hotel on February 13, the day before the bizarre chain of events that began with a two-storey house in the upmarket Ekkamai district exploding.
Thai police say mysterious stickers bearing the word ''Sejeal'' posted on poles and billboards on Bangkok's streets leading to the J.W. Marriott hotel could be a key to identifying those behind the plot.
Sejeal is the name of an Iranian long-range ballistic missile.
About 300 of the foreign-made stickers were found inside the house where the explosion occurred and others were found under the seat of a motorcycle bought by one of the men.
Moradi is in a stable condition in a Bangkok hospital, Khazaei is undergoing police interrogation and Thai authorities are seeking to extradite Sedaghatzadeh from Malaysia.
Bangkok officials are questioning Thailand's open-door visa policy, which has helped sustain the country's tourism industry. All the bomb suspects arrived in Thailand on tourist visas. Authorities have also intensified checks on foreigners in Pattaya and Bangkok.
