BANGKOK, 18 February 2004 — Thailand will build security fences along part of its 650-km border with Malaysia to try to stop militant escaping after attacking Thai forces, Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said yesterday.
The army would build the fences across suspected escape routes used by militants in Thailand’s south, where a new wave of violence began last month when gunmen raided an army base, he said.
“We will focus on areas with cross-border smuggling problems which are not too many. We don’t have to build fences all along the entire 600-km border,” Thaksin told reporters in Bangkok.
A massive security operation has failed to catch the gunmen who stole more than 100 weapons, mostly M-16 assault rifles, in the attack, or the people who set ablaze 21 state schools in an operation officials believe was a diversion.
Since then, machete-wielding raiders or gunmen have killed several monks and police and civil servants.
Some officials believe those behind the attacks may have links to Jemaah Islamiah, widely regarded as the Southeast Asian branch of Al-Qaeda.
In the latest border incident last Saturday, two people were shot dead in the southern province of Narathiwat province while Thaksin was talking to officials about how to halt the violence.
Police believe the attackers were connected to apparently resurgent separatist groups in a region that is home to most of Thailand’s six million Muslims, almost 10 percent of the population. The attackers fled after the ambush.
Thaksin has said the government would pour money into the south, focusing on economic development in Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat provinces near the Malaysian border, where a low-key separatist insurgency was fought in the 1970s and 1980s.
“I will spend about three years making them places for tourism, investments and jobs,” Thaksin said in his weekly radio address on Saturday. “People will also have better education.”
Court Orders Marriott Hotel
Bombing Trial to Continue
Meanwhile, Indonesian judges rejected arguments by defense lawyers and ordered the trial to continue yesterday for a militant accused of recruiting the bomber who attacked a Jakarta hotel.
The trial of Muhammad Rais, 29, should go ahead because “the charge against the defendant was clear, concise and complete enough,” Judge Johannes Binti told the South Jakarta district court.
Binti also dismissed arguments by Rais’ lawyers that their client never ordered bomber Asmar Latin Sani to go ahead with the attack which killed 12 people at the US-franchised JW Marriott hotel in Jakarta last August.
Binti, one of a panel of three judges hearing the trial, said the fact that Rais had introduced Latin Sani to Noordin Mohammad Top — a Malaysian and the alleged key organizer of the bombing — was sufficient evidence to be used.
Prosecutors say Rais introduced Latin Sani to Noordin and his countryman Azahari Husin, an alleged explosives expert, in January 2003.
Rais is also accused of collecting explosive material — 20 kg of potassium chlorate — from another suspect in December 2002 for later use in the Marriott blast.
He could face death by firing squad if convicted under an anti-terror law.
The trial was adjourned until next Tuesday to hear testimony by witnesses.
Police have arrested 14 people for the Marriott attack.
