BANGKOK — Eight former state safety personnel accused of duty for the deaths of 78 Muslim protesters who had been arrested in southern Thailand in 2004 shall be indicted on homicide fees, the prosecutor’s workplace introduced Wednesday.
The case earned particular notoriety as a result of the style by which the victims died. They had been arrested, had their arms tied, and had been loaded onto vans, stacked like firewood. By the point the autos reached a military base the place they had been taken to be detained, 78 had died of crushing or suffocation.
The long-delayed authorized motion in reference to what is called the Tak Bai bloodbath got here simply over a month earlier than the statute of limitations expires on the case. Though the suspects have been indicted, the costs can nonetheless expire if none of these named seems in courtroom earlier than an Oct. 25 deadline.
The deaths occurred shortly after a Muslim separatist insurgency erupted in Thailand’s southernmost provinces of Narathiwat, Pattani and Yala, the one ones with Muslim majorities within the Buddhist-dominated nation.
Muslim residents have lengthy complained they’re handled like second-class residents in Thailand, and separatist actions have been periodically lively for many years. Heavy-handed crackdowns have fueled the discontent. Combating continues to today, however at a decrease degree.
On Oct. 25, 2004, 1000’s of protesters gathered on the police station in Narathiwat’s Tak Bai district to demand the speedy launch of six Muslim males who had been detained a number of days earlier. The detainees, members of an official village protection pressure, had been accused by police of handing over weapons to insurgents, however reporting them stolen.
After the protest turned violent, round 1,300 protesters had been rounded up by troopers and compelled to lie on high of one another in 25 vans earlier than they had been transported to a army camp in neighboring Pattani province, two hours’ drive away. Once they reached the vacation spot, officers reported 78 folks had died. Post-mortem outcomes revealed suffocation was the reason for demise. Seven others had been shot lifeless through the protest.
The officers going through homicide fees are principally the drivers of the vans, but additionally the commander of the fifth Infantry Division, Chalermchai Wirunphet, mentioned Prayuth Bejraguna, a spokesperson for the Workplace of the Legal professional Common.
“Though the eight suspects … didn’t want the victims to have died, getting solely 25 vans to move greater than 1,000 protesters is simply too crowded to be an acceptable approach to transport folks,” Prayuth instructed a information convention. “The defendants’ motion may very well be anticipated to consequence within the victims being suffocated to demise.”
The case doesn’t contain the seven shot lifeless through the protest.
In a associated authorized continuing in April, the victims’ households filed a lawsuit accusing seven troopers and officers of homicide, tried homicide and illegal detention. A kind of indicted was Pisal Wattanawongkiri, commander of the 4th Military Area on the time of the incident and now a lawmaker for the ruling Pheu Thai Social gathering, who enjoys parliamentary immunity from arrest.
The Narathiwat Prison Courtroom has already accepted that case however not one of the accused have but proven as much as hear the costs, which might likewise expire on Oct. 25 beneath the statute of limitations.
Prayuth mentioned the Legal professional Common’s Workplace acquired the case from police investigators in April this 12 months, and had accomplished their finest to expedite the method, ensuing within the indictment determination final week. When requested why there was such a delay earlier than the case was handed to them, Prayuth declined to remark, saying it was a police affair.
