DRUG DEATHS: Police Reveal Nothing At All

Sant Releases No Names, Making Cross-Checking Impossible

Police have failed to pinpoint the specifics of the war on drugs bloodbath
early this year when thousands died, prompting an international outcry and
allegations that the police had gunned down many innocent people and suspects.

At a press conference yesterday, Police Commissioner-General General Sant
Sarutanond failed to give names and other specifics in the slayings. His
breakdown of the death toll was made by categories, without supporting
evidence.

The lack of names and details make it impossible for any independent
verification or cross-check of police information. Law-enforcement officers
have been accused by human-right groups of executing many suspects in
extrajudicial killings.

The police chief's figures were not much different from the statistics
released earlier.

Sant denied that police had resorted to summary killings during the
three-month period and repeated that most deaths were the result of
gangland-style killings, carried out by the drug traffickers themselves.

The police chief said there had been 2,598 murder cases between February 1
and April 30 and a total of 2,849 people had died. Of these, 1,329 were
drug-related slayings and police killed only 57 suspects during arrest
attempts. He said most of those who died, a total of 887 cases, had been
drug traffickers.

"Most of them were killed because they took the drugs to sell and failed to
pay the people they took them from," Sant said. "They were arrested, and
their drugs were seized by police, so they could not pay and were killed in
revenge."

He admitted that police were still in the dark about 1,164 of the deaths
that had been classified as related to drug trafficking.

He said 1,422 murder cases were unrelated to drugs and half of them - about
700 cases - had been solved, with 1,024 suspects arrested.

"You can see that drug-related murders were fewer than other cases," Sant said.

He said there was an average of 450 to 500 murder cases each month in the
Kingdom.

"I admit that during the war on drugs the number of people killed in
drug-related [incidents] rose because we were waging a war and police
stepped up their crackdown, prompting the gangs to kill their own members
to cut [their] links to them. I anticipated this kind of silent killing
even before we started the war," Sant said.

He said the remainder of the slayings, other than the 46 extrajudicial
killings, had not been carried out by police.

"No police would bring trouble on themselves by killing innocent people,"
said Sant. "This is because when murders take place, doctors, public
prosecutors, Interior Ministry officials and officials from the Scientific
Crime Detection Division take part in inspecting the scenes, and police
investigators cannot control these officials."

The government ordered police to investigate the drug-war death toll after
His Majesty the King said in his birthday speech that the government's
image would be tainted if the numbers were not clarified.

Sant claimed that he had talked to high-level police officers in other
countries and none of them questioned the death tolls. "Only foreign
non-governmental organisations and local NGOs questioned the killings,"
Sant said.

However, the National Human Rights Commission has questioned the high death
tolls and expressed suspicion that many of the murders were carried out by
police.

The commission says it has investigated some complaints and believes that
more than 20 cases were summary killings by police, who are now reluctant
to investigate the murders.

Sant said yesterday the human-rights commission had never sought any
information from him.

Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said yesterday that he had received the
police report on the death tolls. He said he had instructed police to
continue investigating the murders together with two special committees
from his office and give regular public updates on the results of the
investigations.

Breakdown

Extrajudicial killings by police: 57 (46 cases)

Still under investigation: 8 cases

Sent to public prosecutors: 4 cases

Being reviewed by the court: 33 cases

Court cleared police of wrongdoing: 1 case