Ruling disappoints family

THE WIFE of missing human-rights lawyer Somchai Neelapaijit said she was sad and disappointed after the Supreme Court yesterday upheld the acquittal of five police officers accused of conspiring to abduct him in 2004.
The court yesterday delivered the final verdict on the case, acquitting Pol Major Ngern Thongsuk, Pol Lt-Colonel Sinchai Nimpunyakampong, Sgt-Major Chaiweng Paduang, Sergeant Randorn Sittikhet and Pol Lt-Colonel Chadchai Leamsa-nguan, who has now changed his name to Napanwut. It said that evidence |presented by investigators was |unreliable.
Ngern was not present in the court, as has been missing since 2008.
Records of telephone calls among the officers, allegedly calling each other while following Somchai – were not reliable enough to convince the court that those officials were involved in Somchai’s disappearance. Eyewitnesses failed to confirm exactly how Somchai was forced by police officers to get in a car and many witnesses gave contradicting testimony to the court about the identity of people at the scene, the court said.
Somchai, a Muslim lawyer, went missing in Bangkok in March 2004 after playing a crucial role in providing legal assistance to Muslim suspects accused of being linked to violence in the deep South. He was regarded among security officials as a troublemaker, and said he interfered with their work to crack down on insurgents in the predominantly Muslim region.
His wife Angkhana said in a statement: “The Supreme Court ruled that the evidence presented by investigators was unreliable and no officials involved could confirm the credibility of the witnesses and evidence submitted to court.”
The court also ruled that under Thai law, Somchai’s family has no right to join the public prosecutors as co-complainants in the case because there was no proof that damage occurred to the family, as it could not be proved if Somchai was alive or dead.
Angkhana said the Supreme Court seemed to be setting a precedent for Thai society that forced disappearances could not be brought to justice.
“This confirms that the family of people forced to disappear have no right to seek justice on behalf of missing people, as they have no proof that the missing is injured or dead. So they cannot take legal action,” her statement said.
Angkhana, speaking to reporters, also called on the government to ratify the United Nations’ international convention on the protection of all people from enforced disappearance.
Thailand also needs a law on forced disappearance to protect the rights of the families of those victims, she said.
“I would like to stress that forced disappearance is a crime to humanity. The victims and their families should have the right to know the truth and to get justice,” she said.
Somchai’s daughter Pratubjit was also dejected.
“I feel very disappointed. This is a failure of the judicial process,” she told reporters outside court.
“I would like to ask the same question I have asked for the past 10 years: Where is Somchai? Where has he disappeared to?” Angkhana asked.
Somchai disappeared from the streets of Bangkok during the government of Thaksin Shinawatra amid a surge in fighting between the Army and separatists in the deep South.
Thaksin, who was deposed in a coup in September 2006, went on record as saying the lawyer had been killed by at least four government officials, although his body has never been recovered.
In January 2006, Pol Major Ngern was sentenced for three years in prison by the primary court, but he later disappeared – allegedly in a landslide, while the other four walked free.
In March 2011, the Appeals Court ruled all five were not guilty.
Rights groups have accused successive Thai governments and the Department of Special Investigation of failing to get to the bottom of Somchai’s abduction and probable murder.