Thread: Two Tourists Brutally Murdered on Koh Tao, One Raped: Police Spark Thailand Manhunt

UK police broke law in case of British backpackers murdered in Thailand

The National Crime Agency in the UK has been forced to admit it acted unlawfully when it gave information to Thai police that helped send two men to death row for murdering two British backpackers.

The NCA supplied phone record evidence and intelligence to investigators in Thailand following the September 2014 murders of Hannah Witheridge, 23, and David Miller, 24, on the island of Koh Tao.

Zaw Lin and Wai Phyo, both Burmese nationals, were convicted of the murders in 2015 after a trial which the anti-death penalty group Reprieve said was unfair. They face execution by lethal injection, and claim to have been tortured.

On Tuesday, the high court in London found against the NCA – Britain’s version of the FBI – in a case brought by lawyers for Lin and Phyo.

The case is controversial because the government opposes the death penalty overseas. As a result there are tight restrictions on what help British law enforcement can provide to police abroad in cases where suspects may be put to death.

The high court order said that five times the NCA breached government rules designed to prevent UK law enforcement from inadvertently aiding human rights abuses abroad, known as overseas security and justice assistance guidance (OSJG).

Following the murders, the NCA passed Miller’s phone location data to Thai police, enabling prosecutors to say the suspects were in the same area as their alleged victim.

The NCA admitted the data-sharing was unlawful, as was the passing on of other material.

The court order also said the NCA ignored rules on seeking authority from its own directors or Home Office ministers, holding only an “informal conversation” with a British diplomat in Bangkok “about the generic death penalty risks”.

“The NCA misinterpreted the guidance … as a result of wrongly placing reliance on (a) a working understanding that the Thai authorities would make a formal request if they wanted to use information in evidence and that the question of death penalty assurances could be considered at that stage, and (b) the risk of the death penalty in fact being carried out, as distinct from the risk of it being imposed.”

The order continued: “Ministerial authorisation will be required for any assistance that might directly or significantly contribute to use of the death penalty where effective mitigation is not available unless the urgent criteria provided for in the guidance are met.”

The NCA accepted in court that it was required to consult departmental ministers.

Reprieve said the evidence and intelligence was used selectively against Lin and Phyo, and that the NCA material potentially pointed to other suspects that could have bolstered the defence case. However, this information was not given to the defence team.

Maya Foa, the director of Reprieve, said: “It is bad enough that the NCA secretly handed over evidence to help secure death sentences in a country known for unfair trials and torture. But they now admit they did this illegally, without any proper thought that their actions could contribute to a grave miscarriage of justice with two men now facing execution.

“UK cooperation with foreign police and security forces should be open and transparent. Government agencies shouldn’t have to be dragged through the courts for the public to know what is being done with their money.”

Lawyers for Lin and Phyo told the court that the data from Miller’s phone was “the only data that was used as evidence by the prosecution at [the murder] trial”.

Foreign and Commonwealth Office guidance, issued in 2016, said it was the UK’s longstanding policy to oppose the death penalty “in all circumstances as a matter of principle”.

The NCA said it was unable to comment on the case “until the court has sealed the order, which is a formality of settlement”.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/...ed-in-thailand

Got to declare a miss trial now., and start again.

Originally Posted by Dandyhole

Got to declare a miss trial now., and start again.

Shouldn't have gone ahead anyway as soon as the Military Junta Prime Minister publicly declared that he has looked at all the evidence and that they are guilty as charged, before any trial took place. Or when the senior police declared that no Thai could have committed the crime, or when...........

Fookin' Monkeyland.

Shark Tooth Ring Guy must be happy about all of this.

Yes.

Er, what exactly did the autopsy conclude about what caused those puncture marks on Miller's body ?

Sheer, evil hatred caused the wounds...

Originally Posted by Les Miserabled

one of the Burmese may talk when it's obvious the end is near.

The day they got arrested should have been obvious their cards were marked. Too late now.

Originally Posted by BaitongBoy

Sheer, evil hatred caused the wounds...

Hence the public outrage and publicity the case recieves.

To think those b'stards are still walking free and laughing about it.

Only young innocent backpackers are welcome on Koh Tao now.

A friend of mine was given his own minder/chaperone on arrival on a recent trip to the island and was discouraged from taking pics anywhere near the crime scene.

I still have that awful image of that poor girl "posed" on the beach in my brain.

Three years have passed and the time is a healer certainly rings true but did they catch her killers?

That question will forever be asked.

I'm not even sure there's any basis in that interview for your corny cliche.

Originally Posted by Wilsonandson

Three years have passed and the time is a healer certainly rings true but did they catch her killers?

That question will forever be asked.

Might be a healer for the family of the slain, but I hardly think the two innocent men still behind bars would think so. Corruption still rules Thailand.

Originally Posted by cyrille

I'm not even sure there's any basis in that interview for your corny cliche.

At least he's keeping the case in the spotlight.

What are you doing?

Dreaming of cobwebs forming on books, in a bookshop in a town full of bookshops with more cobwebs forming on cobwebs and the hope of a spider to brighten ones day.

Fvcking Sybill aka knob jockey aka boring cvnt!

This was the news 8 days after the murders, before the Big Money flew..... A 3 hour interview certainly implies they were on to something. This quote is also telling:

"Meanwhile, a police source said it was not possible that people on the island did not have any knowledge of what might have happened on the night of the murder. The source said may be they don’t want to talk to police, as they do not want to have problems with an influential group."




Police free bar owners and look for ex-village headman's son

The thing that seems suspicious to me is that David's body had puncture marks on it and one of the men he had an argument with previously had a shark tooth ring which would produce marks like that.

The massive publicity behind Mon Sods DNA test was a circus!

The results went missing and Mon Sod entered the Temple for a month, fvcking ridiculous.

Everyone on the Island knows who did it yet a couple of innocent immigrants carry the can.

It's tragic that tourist still give these cvnts money by visiting death island.

Originally Posted by Latindancer

The thing that seems suspicious

Quite a few things, shurely.


The head cop being transferred a day after taking in Mon and announcing the local suspects, kinda cemented what was gonna happen next.

I see the big sheriff that likely got the big money to take the spotlight off the bar owners is back in the news.

https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/...roots#cxrecs_s

Death in Thailand: Botched police work, cover-ups and the truth about the British holidaymakers killed on Koh Tao

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/02/22/death-thailand-botched-police-work-cover-ups-truth-british-holidaymakers/

• Nicola Smith

22 FEBRUARY 2018 • 6:00AM

It was 4am when the phone started ringing. In bed at her home in Surrey, Pat Harrington woke up, fear already tying a knot in her stomach. ‘Mum, it’s me,’ said a faint voice. ‘Mark? What’s happened? What’s wrong?’

It was August 2012, and only a few days earlier, Harrington had waved off her two sons, Ben, 32, and Mark, 28, as they left for a trip of a lifetime to the southern islands of Thailand. ‘Where’s Ben?’ Mark started sobbing. ‘Ben’s dead, Mum. He was on a bike, I don’t know what happened. The police say he hit an electricity pylon.’ Harrington cannot remember what she said next.
The days and weeks that followed are still a blur, but the facts as recorded by the Thai police state that Ben had left the villa he was sharing with Mark on the island of Koh Tao on a rented motorcycle, heading for the bars lining the popular Sairee Beach. Two hours later, at 12.30am on 30 August, he was found dead, lying in a ditch.
If there had been a proper police investigation then Ben’s family, while heartbroken, could have perhaps come to terms with the death. But the investigation, if one can call it that, broke almost every rule in the book. The officers took no photographs of the scene and have no record of who found the body.

Known for its marine life, Koh Tao is a popular destination for young backpackers and holidaymakers, and has an expat community of roughly 2,000 people. But a string of deaths there have suggested a dark side to the island CREDIT: GETTY IMAGES

The family have never seen proof that Ben’s motorbike collided with an electricity pylon and, although a Thai post-mortem claimed his head had turned towards his back, a second autopsy, carried out in Britain, contradicted this finding and said Ben had died from blunt trauma to his chest and a ruptured aorta.

‘I am not going to [record] an accident because I don’t feel I have got sufficient evidence to be satisfied it definitely was an accident,’ explained Penelope Schofield, senior coroner for West Sussex. Crucially, the police have never provided a satisfactory explanation as to why Ben’s wallet and watch were missing. ‘We have been told that there are people who go down these dark roads and use wire and when bikes come along, they just trip them up, mug them and run off,’ says Harrington.
Despite these rumours, the police were quick to write the case off as a simple traffic accident, and just after Ben’s death, while Mark was still in shock, they did nothing to comfort him – he even recalls them cracking jokes among themselves. The police also put Mark under pressure to cremate Ben’s body immediately, in Thailand. When he told his mother by phone, she was frantic. ‘I just shouted, “You do not let them touch him!”’ she says.

She claimed she had received death threats, and accused the Thai authorities of ‘covering up’ the killings of other Western tourists

Six years later, Pat Harrington, a nurse, has given up any hope of ever finding out what really happened that night. But what is most disturbing about her quest for information is the number of other unexplained deaths that have taken place on the apparently idyllic island of Koh Tao, and in other destinations in Thailand popular with British holidaymakers and gap-year students.

One million Britons a year now visit Thailand. But according to figures issued by the Foreign Office, between 2014 and 2016, 1,151 British nationals died there. In 2015/16, Thailand was second only to Spain in the number of British deaths, though in that year Britons made 30 times more visits to Spain.
Many of the deaths have been from illness or accidents, but there have been a string of fatalities whose causes have never been explained. Individually they could be written off as tragic misadventures, but together they begin to point towards a pattern of criminal behaviour, botched detective work and even cover-ups by the police, seemingly under orders to preserve Thailand’s reputation for palm-fringed beaches, turquoise seas and hedonistic Full Moon parties.

Ko Nang Yuan is a small island very close to Ko Tao CREDIT: GETTY IMAGES

An online petition Harrington started, urging the British Government to investigate these suspicious deaths, has so far garnered more than 14,000 signatures, and Harrington herself is now working closely with the parents of several other young victims to campaign for justice, publicise the dangers in Thailand and prevent other families from experiencing the same loss and pain.
Crispin Blunt – the Conservative MP for Reigate in Surrey, and former chair of the House of Commons’ Foreign Affairs Committee – is championing her push to investigate British deaths and corruption within Thailand’s police force, including the possibility that officers have been colluding with criminals over the deaths of ‘vulnerable foreigners’. ‘[The Foreign Office] needs to talk to other Western missions in Thailand to see what patterns they’re getting,’ he says.

‘I think it warrants proper investigation. And plainly, the Thai authorities are not going to want any focus on this because it’s going to put their tourism industry at risk.’ If a pattern is established then tourists, and particularly unseasoned gap-year travellers, should be warned by official travel advice, he goes on. ‘I don’t imagine that it would hit the threshold of saying, “Don’t go to Thailand,” but you could say, “Look out – it’s not as safe as you might think it is.”’

Show more

One of the most high-profile signatories to Harrington’s petition is Laura Witheridge, the sister of Hannah Witheridge, a student from Norfolk who was brutally murdered together with engineering graduate David Miller on Koh Tao in September 2014. Bludgeoned to death after meeting each other on the island, Hannah and David were 23 and 24 years old respectively, and their deaths made headlines around the world.
The police on Koh Tao, under enormous pressure to solve the crime, arrested two Burmese migrant workers, who were subsequently tried and sentenced to death. But serious doubts now surround the investigation.
The petition is also peppered with signatories pleading for justice for the migrant workers, Zaw Lin and Wai Phyo, who have retracted their initial confessions, claiming they were tortured by the police. They now languish on death row, awaiting the verdict of a Supreme Court appeal.

To admit that there were flaws in the investigation is extraordinarily painful for relatives, but a mounting body of evidence suggests that flaws do exist

To admit that there were flaws in the investigation is extraordinarily painful for relatives, but a mounting body of evidence suggests that flaws do exist. In particular, there are major questions over the DNA evidence that was presented to the court.

At the trial, in 2015, the prosecution alleged that DNA taken from the accused matched samples recovered from Hannah’s body. (She was raped before being murdered.) But the legal team spearheading Lin and Phyo’s appeal say the collection of that DNA did not meet international standards – or come anywhere close.
Dr Pornthip Rojanasunand, a Thai forensic scientist, has testified that the crime scene was not protected. And when her laboratory tested the alleged murder weapon, a garden hoe used to rake the sand on the beach where the murders were committed, it found no DNA from either of the accused men.
‘The issue is the whole collection process,’ says Andy Hall, a British human-rights activist and advisor to the defence team. ‘There was no chain of custody presented to the court to support the forensics investigation and analysis.’ For that reason the whole forensics collection, analysis and reporting process was ‘unreliable’ and should be dismissed, he adds.

A re-enactment of the murders of Hannah Witheridge and David Miller CREDIT: REUTERS

David’s parents and brother attended the original trial and issued a powerful statement saying justice had been done; the Witheridges made no formal comment. But Laura later issued a scathing attack on the Thai police for a ‘bungled’ investigation. She warned on Facebook that Thailand was a ‘dangerous trap’, claimed she had received death threats, and accused the Thai authorities of ‘covering up’ the killings of other Western tourists on Koh Tao.

Among the deaths in Thailand that are still unexplained are those of: Luke Miller, 26, from the Isle of Wight, who was found dead at the bottom of a swimming pool at a bar on Sairee Beach in 2016; Nick Pearson, 25, from Derby, who was found floating in the sea off Koh Tao on New Year’s Day 2014; and Elise Dallemagne, 30, from Belgium, and Michael White, 27, from Southampton, both of whose parents contest police reports that their children committed suicide. The official account of death by suicide has also been questioned in the case of Dimitri Povse, 29, from France.
On Koh Tao in particular, a malevolent atmosphere has spread across an island formerly known for its laid-back vibe and abundant marine life. Ex-residents speak privately about a local mafia that runs the island with an iron fist, picking off tourists at will, protected by members of the police force. And such lurid allegations are not uncommon in Thailand.

Ex-residents speak privately about a local mafia that runs the island with an iron fist, picking off tourists at will, protected by members of the police force

It may have a reputation as a tourists’ paradise, but it is politically troubled, ruled by a military junta that took over in 2014, and some civil rights have been suspended. Freedom of speech and press freedoms have been curtailed, and the country – including the police and the judiciary – is riddled with corruption and abuses of power.

In the World Justice Project’s Rule of Law Index, Thailand comes a miserable 71st out of 113 countries, below Burkina Faso and only one place above Colombia. ‘Justice is elusive for the victims of human-rights violations allegedly committed by police,’ explains Katherine Gerson, a South East Asia campaigner for Amnesty International. ‘Their families face significant obstacles in seeking redress, including compromised investigations, mishandling of evidence, intimidation and threats.’
When Nick Pearson’s brother Matt fell to his knees crying over Nick’s death, he was comforted by a European resident of Koh Tao who also warned him not to make a fuss, implying that ‘horrible things happen to people’ who do.
The Pearsons, though, did make a fuss, contesting police claims that Nick, who was holidaying with his family, had fallen from a 50ft cliff outside his hotel room in a drunken accident. A 4ft-high rock blocking the cliff edge made it impossible to fall accidentally, says his mother, Tracy. ‘He could not have fallen over that rock,’ she insists.

Koh Tao CREDIT: GETTY IMAGES

Once again, a British coroner recorded an open verdict, while a pathologist noted many injuries to Nick’s head, limbs and face, saying that although many of these would have been sustained before Nick’s death, he could not rule out the possibility of an assault.

‘Ideally all these cases should be taken apart and the truth needs to be found, but realistically I’m not sure that’s possible. So I think we need to just stay away from Thailand,’ says Andrea Whitaker, whose son Liam, an engineering graduate, died in police custody in Bangkok in 2013.
Royal Thai Police, the foreign ministry, the Koh Tao police and the mayor’s office did not respond to Telegraph enquiries. A spokesperson for the Foreign Office said the travel advice for Thailand was ‘under constant review’.
Sara Cotton, the mother of Luke Miller, still keeps his car outside her home and his clothes in the drawers in his bedroom. ‘I don’t want him to go anywhere,’ she says. ‘He was 26 years old, with his whole life ahead of him. I can’t let go.’
The families who have signed Pat Harrington’s petition, facing a wall of scepticism, accept that they will probably never learn the truth about their children’s deaths. But as Andrea Whitaker says, ‘When young people go to Thailand, they have no idea what they are walking into. They should be warned.’

British Parliament to debate deaths in Thailand.


BRITISH PARLIAMENT TO DEBATE TOURIST DEATHS IN THAILAND - Andrew Drummond

From that link. So right at the peak of the murder hunt, he borrowed $9 mill. The timing is very telling.


"Somyot Poompanmoung was Thailand’s police chief under the military junta when Hannah Witheridge and David Miller were brutally murdered on Sairee Beach, Koh Tao. Their skulls were smashed with a hoe and Hannah was also brutally raped.


Somyot, it has now been revealed, had borrowed the equivalent of some US $9 million from Kamphol Veerathepsuporn, the Chinese-Thai owner of Victoria’s Secret massage parlour (for massage parlour read brothel) at the peak of the murder hunt. This is pretty much the equivalent of borrowing money from the mafia.

Khampol has since fled. He stands accused of people trafficking, exploiting minors etc. Many of the women working at Victoria’s Secret had been trafficked from Burma and Laos.

Poompanmoung denied knowing what business his friend Khampol was in, and if that is a lie then how much truth was he telling during the Koh Tao investigation in which he publicly cleared the Toovichien mafia family, which runs the island ".

Originally Posted by Latindancer

From that link. So right at the peak of the murder hunt, he borrowed $9 mill. The timing is very telling.


"Somyot Poompanmoung was Thailand’s police chief under the military junta when Hannah Witheridge and David Miller were brutally murdered on Sairee Beach, Koh Tao. Their skulls were smashed with a hoe and Hannah was also brutally raped.


Somyot, it has now been revealed, had borrowed the equivalent of some US $9 million from Kamphol Veerathepsuporn, the Chinese-Thai owner of Victoria’s Secret massage parlour (for massage parlour read brothel) at the peak of the murder hunt. This is pretty much the equivalent of borrowing money from the mafia.

Khampol has since fled. He stands accused of people trafficking, exploiting minors etc. Many of the women working at Victoria’s Secret had been trafficked from Burma and Laos.

Poompanmoung denied knowing what business his friend Khampol was in, and if that is a lie then how much truth was he telling during the Koh Tao investigation in which he publicly cleared the Toovichien mafia family, which runs the island ".

Good observation! I wonder what the connection is between the bar owners on Koh Tao and Khampol? There must be one and perhaps Khampol was the broker?

Originally Posted by Lantern

British Parliament to debate deaths in Thailand.


BRITISH PARLIAMENT TO DEBATE TOURIST DEATHS IN THAILAND - Andrew Drummond

I see he gets a bollocking from Millers mother, quite right too as he was always a lazy journalist only interested in tittle tattle and a decade long boring fight with 3 expat con men. He always picked weak targets to 'expose' but then shot himself in the foot by targeting people he underestimated and had to run away, all for the kids education of course!