Pubdate: Sat, 20 Dec 2003 Source: Nation, The (Thailand) Copyright: 2003 Nation Multimedia Group Contact: http://www.nationmultimedia.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1963 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 - --- MAP posted-by: Perry Stripling