Suspects in Thai attacks charged
BANGKOK: Thailand has charged suspects detained after bloody attacks in its predominantly Muslim south and Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra insisted that Islamic militants are not responsible, contradicting top security aides.
“Some suspects we investigated have been charged, but some will be used as witnesses,” Thaksin told reporters here yesterday. But he gave no details.
Dozens of people have been rounded up for questioning, including two Islamic teachers and two members of a Muslim separatist group, since the violence erupted in three southern provinces five days ago.
The unrest has sparked fears of a renewed separatist insurgency which senior security officials said may have ties to foreign groups such as Jemaah Islamiah (JI), the South-East Asian network linked to al-Qaeda.
But Thaksin said criminals were behind the violence in a region known for lawlessness, drug smugglers and gunrunners, supplying insurgents to as far away as Sri Lanka and Indonesia.
“That ideology is over,” Thaksin said in reference to separatism that drove low-level insurgency in the 1970s and 1980s.
“It’s just a combination of those demanding money from people. They seek money using an easy way.”
But senior government officials continued to suggest that the Buddhist majority nation is facing an Islamic militancy far bigger than previously believed.
Interior Minister Wan Muhamad Noor Matha said the co-ordinated arson attacks on 21 schools on Sunday, which authorities said was a diversion to loot an army depot of more than 100 weapons after killing four soldiers, was the work of separatists.
“We believe that all the attackers are involved with the Bersatu group, who earlier mobilised youths to cause unrest,” he told reporters.
Police say Bersatu is an umbrella name for a number of separatist groups, including the Gerakan Mujahideen Islam Pattani, the Barisan Revolusi Nasional and Pattani United Liberation Organisation.
“We will bring in more people for questioning. The Bersatu group has an ideology to mobilise and expand their co-operation with terrorist groups,” Wan Muhamad Noor said.
Local support for Muslim separatists dried up in the 1990s as the government ploughed money into the region where most of Thailand’s six million Muslims live and offered amnesty to the fighters.
On Thursday, Gen Kitti Rattanachaya, a former army commander in the south and now a government security adviser, said links between militants in the region went back to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan when many foreign Muslims joined the mujahideen (holy warriors).
There has been speculation since the August capture in Thailand of Hambali, the Indonesian-born suspected JI operations chief thought to have masterminded the Bali bombings in 2002, that the country was being used as a haven to plan attacks. – Reuters
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