Published on January 13, 2006

Missing lawyer’s widow says justice system has failed after four police officers walk free and court rejects phone records. The Criminal Court yesterday sentenced a senior police officer to three years jail – but acquitted four others linked to the disappearance of prominent Muslim lawyer Somchai Neelaphaijit in March 2004.

Pol Major Ngern Thongsuk, of the Crime Suppression Bureau, was jailed under Article 309 of the Penal Code, on a charge of illegal detention. Three of seven eyewitnesses who testified in court said they had seen Ngern forcibly push Somchai into a car.

“As the facts settle that the defendant [Major Ngern] and his group had taken Somchai against his consent, the Court finds Ngern guilty and imprisons him for three years for illegal detention,” the court ruling said.

The court acquitted four other accused police – Lt-Colonel Chatchai Liumsanguan, Lt-Colonel Sinchai Nimpunyakhamphong, Sergeant Chaiyaweng Phaduang and Corporal Randorn Sithikhet – because the eyewitnesses provided confused information about the identity of others with Major Ngern at the time of the abduction.

Hundreds of people, mostly Muslims, attended the court session to hear the verdict. Many held up posters calling for justice for the Muslim lawyer and urging authorities to search for him, whatever the verdict.

Somchai’s wife Angkana, who was a joint plaintiff in the case, voiced disappointment with the verdict. She said it reflected a failure of the justice system.

The police and prosecutors who handled the case were unable to bring sufficient and comprehensive evidence to the trial, she said.

“When police are tasked to investigate police, we cannot achieve anything,” she said.

“I am not satisfied with the outcome. I believe, as the court ruled, that at least four or five people were involved in Khun Somchai’s disappearance,” Angkana told reporters after the verdict.

“I will press on to find him by all legal and necessary means.”

Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, however, viewed the verdict differently. He said officials had made progress in Somchai’s case and this would make people confident in the justice system.

Thaksin told Angkana in a private meeting last year that he had information about Somchai’s abduction and had instructed the Justice Ministry’s Department of Special Investigation (DSI) to pursue the case separately from the prosecution investigation.

But Angkana said the department had made no progress in the six months since. She urged the premier and DSI to make some real moves.

Somchai, who was defending Muslim suspects in connection with violence in the restive South, went missing on March 12, 2004, soon after publicly claiming that some of his clients had been tortured by police.

Prosecutors told the court that Somchai’s allegation of torture had humiliated police officers and that abducting him was a neat way to silence a troublesome lawyer and give police a free hand to lock up the Muslim suspects.

Significantly, the court yesterday ruled out as evidence the mobile-phone records of the five police officers on the day of the abduction, which prosecutors said proved they contacted each other to coordinate the kidnapping.

The report of telephone usage appeared to be fabricated and none of the mobile-phone operators’ representatives had convinced judges that the evidence was genuine, the court ruled.

“Even if the information in the paper submitted to the court is true, it is not enough to prove that conversations on the phones were really connected to the action to abduct Somchai,” the court said.

Representatives of local and international human right agencies that attended the court for the verdict urged the government to step up efforts to find the lawyer.

“The fact the judge has established that at least one state agent was responsible for the abduction and disappearance of Somchai is of tremendous importance,” said Basil Fernando, executive director of the Hong Kong-based Asian Human Rights Commission.

“The deliberate silence around this case must now be broken,” he said. “The state has the resources and the obligation to do this.”

Supalak Ganjanakhundee

The Nation

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