Yao druglord gets death sentence
A Criminal Court official accompanies 29-year-old Jirasak Chatworraniti into the courtroom, where he was sentenced to death for drug-trafficking in Thailand and Laos.
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An influential drug dealer was sentenced to death yesterday while his girlfriend and an alleged accomplice were acquitted.
Jirasak Chatworraniti, a Yao tribesman also known as Sun, was found guilty of trying to strike a deal involving 60 bars of heroin and 137,800 methamphetamine tablets with undercover agents in a sting operation on February 22, 2005. He later fled to China after being temporarily released, but was found by Chinese police in Kunming and deported to Thailand in Feb 2006. Jirasak, 29, had long been wanted by anti-narcotics agencies and the US Drug Enforcement Administration for his activities in Thailand, Burma and Laos. The Criminal Court acquitted Uthai Somprasobsuk and Kanjana Homnan, Jirasak's girlfriend, on grounds of insufficient evidence. Jirasak was also handed a prison term of two years and nine months for criminal conspiracy, but it was superseded by the death sentence. The contraband involved in the bust was to be incinerated. Meanwhile, deputy police chief Lt-General Jongrak Juthanont has been appointed head of a new team to investigate more than 2,500 killings during two anti-drug campaigns in 2003 during the Thaksin Shinawatra government's first term. Jongrak and the 27 team members, all senior officers, will report directly to Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont and update him on progress. No deadline has been set for the completion of the investigation.
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