DRUG WAR VICTIMS

ONCB won't return slain couple's seized assets


BHANRAVEE TANSUBHAPOL SUPAMART KASEM



The Office of the Narcotics Control Board (ONCB) has refused to return assets worth more than 20 million baht it seized from a couple killed during the height of the drug war to their family, saying the sources of the assets were obscure. ONCB secretary-general Kitti Limchaikij said the impounded assets of three other victims of extra-judicial killings had been returned to their respective families back in 2003, but the family of Pongthep and Ampaiwan Rukhongprasert, who were slain in Tak's Mae Sot district on May 18, 2003, will not be handed back the seized assets.

All the four cases were ordered re-investigated by the Department of Special Investigation which agreed during a meeting chaired by Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont last December that the seized assets be returned to the affected families.

Mr Kitti said the agency had to return the assets to the three families as it could not establish a link between the money and the drug sales even though police had stated in their investigation reports that some drugs had been found at the crime scenes.

In the case of Pongthep and Ampaiwan, Mr Kitti said the couple's relatives could not produce any evidence to support their claims that the assets had not been accumulated with laundered money.

However, Lawan Uppakul, a relative of the slain couple, said the family had already explained to the ONCB that the money in question was in the form of loans Pongthep and Ampaiwan had taken from a bank for their transport business. She said the couple used 16 million baht of the loan for the bidding of 20 trailers on auction, and 11 million baht for land purchase and construction of their office building. The woman yesterday provided copies of the couple's bank accounts to a team of DSI officials during a meeting.

The other three cases still under probe by the DSI include the death of a 9-year-old boy named Nong Fluke, and the disappearance of his mother in Feb 23, 2003; Nikhom Ounkaew and his wife Khanraya, who were killed in Nakhon Ratchasima's Khon Buri district on March 28, 2003; and Samarn Thongdee, an education specialist, who was murdered in Tak's Muang district in April 2003.

A DSI source said yesterday that the teams handling the Nong Fluke case had made some progress as they had found many suspicious points in the investigation report drawn up by police. He said the DSI is trying to find out whether police had helped those involved in the killing of Nong Fluke.

''Nong Fluke's death was an extra-judicial killing because investigators had found that it was allegedly the police who had shot at the car. The report blamed the attack on a drug network, which police claimed wanted to silence his mother as she was driving off in the car to escape arrest,'' said the same source.
The case had dragged on as some witnesses refused to testify out of safety fears, the source said, adding the court should grant them witness protection.

Bangkok Post