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

What has been evident is the total contempt for the truth the British government has shown; complicit even.

With the Thais, that's a give me, obviously. I hope the two Thais that did this get topped soon, and graphically...

Koh Tao case: Migrant workers sentenced to death for murders of Hannah Witheridge and David Miller - Telegraph

By Our Foreign Staff3:48AM GMT 24 Dec 2015
Two Burmese migrant workers have been found guilty of murdering a pair of British backpackers on a Thai island in a case that tarnished the kingdom's tourist industry and raised questions over its justice system.
Zaw Lin and Win Zaw Tun were sentenced to death after being convicted of killing David Miller, 24, and the rape and murder of Hannah Witheridge, 23, on the picture-postcard resort island of Koh Tao in southern Thailand.
They were also sentenced to 20 years for raping Ms Witheridge.
The two men had denied killing the British pair, whose battered bodies were found on a beach on September 15, 2014.
Defence lawyers accused the police of bungling their investigation and using the Myanmar migrants - both aged 22 - as scapegoats.
Rights groups said the case reflected a wider trend of low-paid migrant workers from neighbouring countries, including Myanmar, being blamed for crimes in Thailand where the justice system is easily bent by wealth and power.
One of the suspects named as Win during a re-enactment of the alleged murder of David Miller and Hannah Witheridge
Win, one of the suspects during the re-enactment of the alleged murder of David Miller and Hannah Witheridge Photo: REUTERS
The men were arrested on October 2 after a high-profile police probe, which saw authorities come under intense pressure to solve a case that shocked the Thai public.
Prosecutors said the evidence against the men was rock solid, including DNA traces found on Ms Witheridge's body as well as the suspects being in possession of Mr Miller's phone and sunglasses.
A panel of three judges delivered their verdict on the neighbouring island of Koh Samui.
Mr Miller was struck by a single blow and left to drown in shallow surf while Ms Witheridge had been raped and then bludgeoned to death with a garden hoe.
The defence disputed the forensic evidence as flawed and accused the police of torturing their clients into signing confessions, which they later retracted.
Their lawyers pointed to the fact the DNA found on the hoe did not match either of the suspects and say forensic gathering techniques were riddled with errors.
An advisor to the defence team who visited the accused on Wednesday said the pair were "tense" and "nervous".
"But they're both confident that they will be acquitted by the court... they said that whatever the result, they will stay strong and they will move forward into the future," Andy Hall of the Migrant Worker Rights Network told AFP.
The police investigation had been dogged by accusations of incompetence.
In the hours after the bodies were found police failed to seal off the crime scene or close the island's port.
Gruesome pictures of the victims' bodies also quickly emerged online, piling on the misery of their distraught families.
Initially officers appeared to flounder in their quest for the perpetrators, casting suspicion on a backpacker seen drinking with Miller and Witheridge on the night they died and the son of an influential village headman.
Police eventually arrested and charged Zaw Lin and Win Zaw Tun, also known as Wai Phyo.
Within days of their arrest Thai police said the pair had confessed. But they soon retracted those confessions, insisting they were made under duress, a charge the police deny.
During the trial investigators were accused of failing to properly collect and preserve DNA samples and declining to test key pieces of evidence, such as Witheridge's clothes.
The murders stained Thailand's reputation as a tourist haven but did not prompt visitor numbers to significantly tail-off.
The bodies of Hannah Witheridge, 23, from Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, and David Miller, 24, were found on the neighbouring island of Koh Tao a year ago with terrible head injuries.
Prosecutors alleged that the accused men killed Mr Miller and then raped and murdered Miss Witheridge after they saw the Britons having sex on the beach. The victims were not a couple and no evidence has been presented that they were having sex when attacked.
Pornthip Rojanasunand, the head of Thailand's forensics institute, told the Koh Samui court that DNA found on the alleged murder weapon did not match that of the two accused Burmese men.
Prosecution witnesses said in court earlier this year that Miss Witheridge had been raped and DNA from Zaw Lin and Wei Phyo, both 22, was found in her body.
Zaw Lin, one of the suspects, told the court that he feared for his life after his interrogators stripped him naked in a freezing room, placed plastic bags over his head and repeatedly asked: “Did you kill or not?”
The baby-faced defendant claimed he was then blindfolded, beaten and told that he would be killed and his body dumped at sea if he did not admit the killing. “They told me ‘if you confess, you’ll just go to prison for four or five years,” he said.