POLICE LOWER DRUG-WAR DEATH TOLL TO 1,329

Police have revised downward the number of violent deaths during the first
three months of the war on drugs from 2,921 to 1,329, claiming the rest of
the killings were unrelated to drugs, a well informed police source said
yesterday.

The figures are part of a report compiled by Pol Lt-General Nawin
Singhapalit, who is in charge of reinvestigating the unusually high death
toll in the February 1 to April 30 drug war.

The figures from the report are to be announced by police commissioner
General Sant Sarutanond at 11am today.

The government scrambled to recheck the figures after His Majesty the King
said in his birthday speech that the administration should clarify the high
number of deaths during the first phase of the government's war on illegal
drugs.

According to the source, Nawin's report states that a total of 2,921 deaths
occurred in 2,656 murder cases during the three months.

Of these, 58 cases involved confirmed extra-judicial killings by police
while making arrests. There were 72 people killed in these incidents. Of
the 58 cases, the report says, 12 were not related to drug suppression, and
15 people were killed in these 12 cases.

The report says that 1,422 cases involving 1,502 deaths were not drug
related. The police source declined to explain why these cases had been
separated out or how many of them had been solved.

The report says 1,329 people were killed in 1,176 incidents confirmed as
related to the drug trade. The report says that only 23 out of the 1,176
confirmed drug-related cases had been solved and that 23 suspects had been
arrested.

For the rest, police still do not know who was behind the killings, it
says. Sant has reiterated that drug-related killings were either
"silencings" or "gangsters fighting amongst themselves".

During the first phase of the war on drugs, police always shrugged off the
rise in the number of murders, saying they were "silencings" or murders
carried out on the orders of drug bosses to prevent the victim being linked
to them. Human-rights activists suspect police initiated a terror campaign
to intimidate drug traffickers.