BANGKOK, 21 July — Thai authorities say progress is being made in investigating the deaths of four Saudis, including three diplomats, who were murdered here more than a decade ago, a report said yesterday.
"The cases have been dormant for a while. Now they will press forward," Prime Minister’s Office Minister Pongthep Thepkanjana, who heads a committee working on the cases, told the Bangkok Post. Some cases were in the prosecution stage, while others had reached court, the minister said.
The unsolved murders, which occurred in 1989 and 1990, have long plagued relations between Thailand and Saudi Arabia. Pongthep’s panel has met 16 times since Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra set it up in March this year, the report said.
On July 1, police headquarters named 13 high-ranking officers, headed by assistant national police chief Lt.Gen.Chidchai Wannasathit, to a second panel charged with investigating the murders, it added.
The first murder took place in 1989, when a Saudi embassy third secretary was shot dead in front of his Bangkok home. In February 1990, two Saudi diplomats and an embassy staff member were shot and killed. In a separate incident during the same month, a Saudi businessman went missing.
Thai police investigations at the time were unable to track down the killers. But Saudi officials reportedly linked the murders to a 1989 jewelry heist by a Thai janitor working at a Saudi palace.
The Thai national, Kraingkrai Tejamonga, served a prison term in Thailand while some of the lavish gems returned to Saudi Arabia were found to be fake. Tens of thousands of Thais worked in Saudi Arabia prior to the murders and the high-profile case of Kraingkrai, but that number has since dwindled as relations between the two countries soured.
The four diplomats killed in Thailand were: Abdullah Al-Basary, Fahd Al-Bahely, Ahmad Al-Saif and Abdullah Al-Maliki..
Meanwhile, a high-level source at Thailand’s Foreign Ministry told Saudi daily Okaz that his country had received new information on the Bangkok murders.
"There is new information regarding the murder of Saudi diplomats," Vozith Deng, the official, told the Arabic newspaper without giving details.
But informed Thai sources said the government’s plan to re-open the investigation indicated that it had received new clues to the case.
"The Thai police have information about the involvement of the Thai labor Mafia as well as Thai businessmen in the murder," the paper reported quoting its sources.
