Published on January 14, 2006

Missing Muslim lawyer Somchai Neelaphaijit has been murdered by government officials, Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra revealed yesterday, saying he expected the Justice Ministry’s Department of Special Investigation (DSI) to wrap up the case in a month’s time. “We are now coming to the conclusion that he is already dead and will file a case of murder,” he told reporters.

Somchai, who defended several Muslim suspects in connection with the violence in the restive South, went missing on March 12, 2004, shortly after publicly accusing the police of torturing his clients.

The Criminal Court on Thursday sentenced Pol Major Ngern Thongsuk of the Crime Suppression Bureau to three years’ imprisonment for violating Somchai’s liberty after witnesses testified to seeing the senior police officer force the lawyer into a car on the day he went missing.

The court acquitted the four other policemen on trial as it found no convincing evidence to convict them.

Thaksin confirmed that more than four government officials had been involved in Somchai’s murder but said he was not quite sure whether the DSI could find sufficient evidence to bring all of them to justice.

He told Somchai’s wife, Angkana Neelaphaijit, last August that the lawyer had been abducted to the western province of Ratchaburi and instructed the DSI to take on the case even though the five police officers were already facing trial.

Thaksin is not the first government member to declare that Somchai has been killed: former deputy PM Chavalit Yongchaiyudh let slip during a parliamentary session some months after Somchai’s abduction that he was dead.

Angkana, who expressed disappointment with the court verdict on Thursday, said she would not give up searching for her husband and urged the government to bring out the truth about his fate.

Somchai’s disappearance has been under the spotlight locally and internationally as an example of the government’s treatment of human-rights defenders and because of the alleged involvement of state officials.

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