Secret files plundered

Government House will reopen in about two weeks but investigators now believe that PAD protesters stole sensitive national security files.

Data including computer and server hard disks from National Security Council offices were stolen and damaged during the People's Alliance for Democracy's occupation of the seat of government from late August until last week.

A team including police from the Scientific Crime Detection Division inspected the offices after the PAD vacated Government House where the NSC offices are located.

Government House will reopen in about two weeks after a major clean-up of its buildings and premises, a senior official said.

The NSC on Monday estimated the cost of the lost hardware and software at 40 million baht. The damage included lost data from closed-circuit television systems and the intranet system.

NSC officials, who led forensic police to inspect the NSC office building, were shocked to see the automatic door of the 4th floor, which houses the NSC's national crisis management centre and the NSC's information technology centre, had been forced open.

An inspection found that several computer hard disks and six central server hard disks in the national crisis management centre had been removed. Central server hard disks in the information technology centre were also stolen.

Therdthai Sri-uppra, director of the NSC's IT centre, said the server hard disks in the national crisis management centre contained no data.

However, server hard disks stolen from the IT centre contained the NSC's data since 2001, he said. Mr Therdthai said confidential information regarding national security was kept separately.

He said NSC units would be asked to check damage caused to their offices before the total cost of the damage was calculated.

Police Monday collected fingerprints from the automatic door and computers.

During the inspection, tyres of more than 10 NSC vehicles in the parking lot were found to have been deflated and two closed-circuit cameras in front of the NSC building were removed.

NSC security guards told police they had been inside the office for two days during the PAD's seizure of Government House. They said PAD guards had forced the door of the office via the parking lot and held them for interrogation before freeing them.

A source said the NSC security guards' room on the first floor of the building was ransacked and the signal of the closed-circuit system had been cut off. Some belongings of the NSC guards reportedly disappeared.

There were no traces of ransacking on the second floor, which houses office rooms of the NSC secretary-general and deputies, the source said.

However, the positions of closed-circuit cameras on the third-floor meeting room had been changed.

The exact schedule for officials of the PM's Office and other government agencies to get back to work in the buildings has not been announced, but it would be after Dec 26, when officials and workers have finished cleaning up, Deputy Secretary-General to the prime minister Loyluen Bunnag said on Monday.

Officials and operators of shops in the compound have been to the area and continue to assess the damage.

Conscripts from a military development unit and staff of the Dusit district office were also sent in to clean the buildings and remove sandbags left by the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD).

Anti-government demonstrators left Government House on Dec 2 after the Constitution Court dissolved three coalition parties, including the People Power Party, and banned executive members from politics for five years, a verdict which compelled then prime minister Somchai Wongsawat to resign.

The PAD had occupied the compound of Government House from Aug 26.

A paddy field and vegetable plots grown in the compound by the demonstrators have been removed.

Government spokesman Natthawut Saikua said a committee would be set up to assist those government agencies which suffered damage during the PAD's occupation.

He claimed that the evidence gathered was sufficient to bring charges against those who caused damage to Government House.

Deputy national police chief Pol Gen Jongrak Chuthanont said the search for evidence to implicate those involved in the seizure of Government House would continue.

He also threatened to take legal action against those who provided logistics support and meals to PAD supporters.