Three foreigners belonging to a suspected passport forgery ring were charged yesterday after police found them with drugs, guns and a dismembered body stashed in a freezer at a Bangkok building.
Police said they were trying to confirm the nationalities of the English speakers, who were found with multiple passports, but suspect they are US or British citizens.
A US embassy spokesman said he was following the case, but could not comment due to privacy concerns.
Photo: Reuters
Police said one of the men grabbed a gun and opened fire during Friday’s raid, injuring one officer, who was hospitalized.
Officers collected a cache of drugs and guns and discovered the bagged body parts of a man, described as a blond foreigner, inside a padlocked freezer on the ground floor, they said.
“They are charged on five counts, including attempting to kill an official on duty, resisting arrest, illegal possession of firearms and ammunition, forging official documents and concealing a corpse,” said Chanin Vachirapraneekul, commander of the police station in Bangkok’s Phra Khanong district, where the men were taken.
Forensic officers are working to identify the deceased person.
The men, two of whom have gray hair according to photographs published in local media, have denied all charges, police said.
A Burmese housekeeper and her husband, who were initially detained with the group, have not been charged with any crimes and are being treated as witnesses in the case, Bangkok deputy police commander Suwat Jangyodsuk said.
“As of now we suspect that they are a passport forgery gang,” he said of the three men in custody. “We seized more than 10 fake documents, including passports.”
Thailand has long served as a base for foreign criminals and fugitives lured by the kingdom’s porous borders, lax visa requirements and notoriously bribable police force.
A thriving forged-documents trade has also helped shield countless crime syndicates populating Thailand’s vast underworld.
In February Thai police arrested an Iranian man known as “The Doctor,” who crafted pristine passports from his home in a Bangkok suburb and sold the documents to thousands around the globe — including gangsters, rebels, refugees and migrant workers.
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