Thailand to prosecute eight over 2004 Tak Bai deaths

The incident remains one of the deadliest in the long-running armed rebellion in Thailand’s southern provinces.

Thailand has said it will prosecute eight former security personnel over the 2004 Tak Bai killings in which 78 protesters suffocated after they were arrested and piled on top of each other in army trucks.

Wednesday’s announcement from the attorney general’s office comes just weeks before the expiry of the statute of limitations of the case on October 25 and after a Thai court last month accepted a related complaint against seven former senior security personnel filed by the victims’ families.

“The suspects could have foreseen that their actions would have led to the suffocation and deaths of the 78 people under their responsibility,” attorney general spokesperson Prayut Bejaguran told a news conference.

The incident remains one of the deadliest in the long-running conflict in Thailand’s predominantly Muslim southern provinces. The protesters died after they were arrested at a rally outside a police station and then stacked on top of each other in the back of Thai military trucks.

The government at the time, under Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, expressed regret at the deaths but denied wrongdoing.

Police, meanwhile, initially said some protesters were armed.

More than 7,600 people have been killed in some 20 years of unrest in Thailand’s predominantly Muslim provinces bordering Malaysia.

Thaksin’s daughter, Paetongtarn Shinawatra, became Thailand’s prime minister last month.

Last week, a Narathiwat court summoned a former military commander and issued arrest warrants for six retired senior security personnel after they failed to appear at a criminal hearing over the complaint filed by the families.

The commander is now a politician with the ruling Pheu Thai Party.