Alleged drug lord blames Thai Army for Mekong killings

Prosecutors in the southwestern city of Kunming, capital of Yunnan province, charged Nor Kham and five others with murder, drug trafficking, kidnapping and hijacking ships, state media reported.
But in a surprise move for China’s carefully orchestrated trial system, Nor Kham denied any involvement in the case when questioned in court yesterday, despite reportedly confessing his role in the killings earlier.
The semi-official China News Service said prosecutors asked him if he had ordered the hijacking of Chinese boats, killing the crew and planting drugs on the vessels.
In court, Nor Kham denied all charges, saying: “The [crime] was carried out by the Thais. I knew about it through television.”
The agency quoted Liu Yuejin, director of the Chinese Public Security Ministry’s anti-narcotics bureau, as saying Nor Kham’s denial was unlikely to change the course of the trial.
“Even though Nor Kham has withdrawn the confession, it won’t change the facts of the crime, because the evidence is conclusive,” Liu was quoted as saying.
Myanmar citizen Nor Kham, 44, was extradited from Laos to China in May after joint operations by police in Thailand, Laos and China.
State broadcaster China Central Television identified two co-defendants from Myanmar going by the Chinese names Zha Bo and Zha Tuobo.
Two more defendants of Thai and Laotian nationality were named as Sangkang Zhasa and Zha Xika, while the nationality of the sixth defendant, Yi Lai, was not provided.
China’s official Xinhua news agency quoted Dong Lin, the court’s vice president, as saying before the trial that it was “uncommon in China’s judicial practice for foreigners who commit crimes against Chinese nationals outside China to be brought to justice before a Chinese court”.
Reports said relatives of the 13 Chinese victims and embassy personnel from the defendants’ countries attended the trial, which will run until Sunday.
Xian Yanming, Yunnan’s deputy police chief, told the China Daily newspaper earlier that Nor Kham’s gang had “colluded with renegade Thai soldiers in premeditated attacks on Chinese ships”. They wanted to “make it appear that [Thai] authorities had uncovered a major drug-related case” by planting drugs on the vessels and pretending that the Chinese sailors were drug traffickers who died in a shoot-out, Xian said.