Thai police arrest foreigners and find dead body in Bangkok raid
|
Version 0 of 1. Thai police have raided a Bangkok building and arrested five foreigners after a shootout, discovering guns, crystal meth, fake passports and a dead body in a freezer, officers said. The suspects include three English-speaking men and a Burmese woman and her husband, according to Bangkok’s police chief, Sanit Mahathavorn. Police said they were still confirming the nationalities of the three English speakers, who were reported in local media to be two Americans and one Briton. One of the suspects opened fire on police during the raid on Friday, injuring an officer, police told reporters. Police then discovered a corpse, carved up into pieces, inside a freezer on the ground floor. Officers determined it was a “foreign man with blond hair”, said Sanit. “His body was cut with sharp object into six pieces, put in a black bag and brought into the freezer,” he told reporters, adding that the suspects have been brought to a station in south-west Bangkok for further interrogation. Police said they found forged passports, three guns and crystal meth inside the building, which the group had rented for three months. “Tourism police investigated and found out that international criminals were staying at that place and using it to do wrong things,” the national tourist police commander, Surachet Hakpan, said. With porous borders, visa-free travel for many countries and notoriously corrupt law enforcement, Thailand has long been a haven for foreign criminals and fugitives. The kingdom draws transnational criminals involved in everything from human trafficking to gem thefts or the illegal wildlife trade. The current junta government has vowed to crack down on foreign criminals in an operation immigration police have called “Good guys in, bad guys out”. |