Daniel Pedersen

Courier Mail

January 24, 2006

By Daniel Pedersen

Bangkok

ONE police officer has been jailed for three years and a further four were acquitted by a court during the week after being tried for kidnapping a Muslim lawyer who has not been seen for almost two years.

Prosecutors alleged the five men colluded to kidnap Somchai Neelapaijt, an action designed to facilitate state-sanctioned murder.

Mr Somchai’s disappearance was one of the catalysts of a Muslim insurgency that has since claimed thousands of lives.

The lawyer has not been seen since March 2004, when witnesses saw five men bundle him into a car.

He is presumed dead.

At the time of his disappearance, Mr Somchai had been representing militants accused of involvement in a January 4, 2004, raid on a military arms depot in which more than 300 automatic weapons were stolen.

Mr Somchai publicly accused police of torturing four of his clients. The clients, all Muslim men, were accused of belonging to regional terror group Jemaah Islamiyah, but were acquitted in June last year.

Since the arms raid, the south has been stricken by a Muslim insurgency.

Police statistics this week showed that since 2004, more Muslims than Buddhists have been killed in the south, where urban attacks on soft targets such as markets have become commonplace.

Most of Thailand’s Muslim minority lives in the south, far outnumbering Buddhists in the provinces of Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat.

Buddhists in those provinces make up only about 13 per cent of the population.

The police statistics attributed 3138 deaths to the insurgency — 1750 civilian Muslims and 477 civilian Buddhists, religion not being recorded in every report.

But Buddhists have to this point been painted as the victims of the violence and local media has particularly focused on the deaths of four monks.

Interpreting the police figures, officials suggested ruthless infighting and treachery among Muslims, claiming those killed had been working for the government, either as civil servants or informants.

These previously unreleased figures dwarf what had previously been regarded as official estimates of casualties, compiled by the army, which put the number of deaths related to the hostilities at 1076.

Police have documented the deaths of 406 security personnel and 298 militants.

Despite the security presence sent to protect the general populace, trust in the military and security forces is at a low ebb.

Security reports from Singapore suggested Bangkok was facing a real prospect of a terrorist attack as tensions rise.

Rohan Gunaratna, a security analyst at Singapore’s Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies , said it was only a matter of time before Bangkok was attacked.

He said Thailand’s Government needed to expand its intelligence and work with Malaysia to stop the spread of cross-border terrorism.

"If they don’t do that, our assessment is that terrorists will attack Bangkok before the end of the year," he said.

ENDS