BANGKOK, 18 December 2004 — There is no evidence to suggest the deaths of 78 Muslims in army custody following an October demonstration in southern Thailand was deliberate, the head of an investigation panel said yesterday, stirring more Muslim anger.

“Anyone could think it was deliberate, but our evidence could not prove it was intentional,” Pichet Soontornpipit told reporters after submitting his preliminary report on the Tak Bai incident to Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra.

The 78 were among hundreds “stacked like bricks” in army trucks, according to one survivor. The victims either suffocated or were crushed to death on a long journey to a military base in the deep south, once an Islamic sultanate and annexed by Buddhist Thailand 100 years ago. The panel’s verdict outraged Muslim leaders in the region, where 500 people have been killed since a new cycle of violence was sparked in January by a raid on an army camp.

“Intention is something inside, which one can’t prove, but action is a reflection of what people have in mind,” Narathiwat Islamic council chief Abdulrahman Abdulsahad told Reuters.

“People don’t even transport their animals this way. How can the government win Muslim hearts and minds when what it has done means it has no credibility with the people?” he asked.

Thaksin, who faces a general election in February, has used a combination of force and promises of development in hopes of restoring peace to the relatively poor area, long a violent region harboring gun runners and smugglers.

He even organized the airdrop of 100 million paper “birds of peace” from the air, but there is no evidence it has eased the tension in the three southernmost provinces — Yala, Narathiwat and Pattani — where most of the violence has occurred. “The birds was just an entertainment interval,” said security analyst Chidchanok Rahimmula at Prince of Songkhla University in Pattani. “Things have become even more intense after the arrest of four clerics.”

The four — teachers at private madrasas arrested this week — face charges of treason, causing unrest and separatism.

Waeyuso Waeduramae, Muhamad Hanafi Doloh, Abdul Roseh Hayidoloh and Ahama Bula were flown from the Muslim-dominated Deep South to the Thai capital, where a criminal court remanded them in custody.

They were brought to Bangkok yesterday for further interrogation.

Another suspected leader of what has increasingly taken on the appearance of an insurgency, Sapaeing Bazo, principal of a private madrasa in Yala province, fled before a raid on his house.

The probe also decided that the deaths of seven protesters killed during clashes with security forces in front of the Tak Bai district police station in Narathiwat could not be ruled deliberate, panel chief Pichet said.

All were killed by bullets, which had traveled a considerable distance, suggesting security men had, as they said at the time, fired into the air and the bullets hit people as they dropped, Pichet said.