DSI: Thai police not implicated in killing of Saudi diplomat

At Jotman.com I've posted the Internet's most comprehensive timeline of the "Blue Diamond Affair." Consulting the timeline will help you get your mind around what is quite possibly the most amazing crime saga in the history of Thailand.

Today came the latest installment in this twenty-year story of Thai police criminality and ineptitude. The Nation reports:

The Department of Special Investigation (DSI) issued an arrest warrant yesterday for a suspect behind the murder of a Saudi diplomat 19 years ago.

Police Colonel Thawee Sodsong, Director of the DSI, said his department had gathered enough evidence to charge Abu Ali for the murder of one of four Saudis, Abdullah A. al-Besri, who was gunned down in Bangkok in January 1990.

Al-Besri and the three others- two diplomats and a private citizen - were assigned to look into the highly publicised Saudi diamond scandal that shattered diplomatic ties between Thailand and Saudi Arabia. One diplomat was killed in 1989, two others Saudis died with al-Besri the following year.

Bilateral ties between the two countries took a nosedive following the murder of the three diplomats and another Saudi citizen in Bangkok.

Efforts have been made to upgrade relations, but the Saudis have said full diplomatic ties will only return if the murder cases are resolved and the real Blue Diamond taken during the theft is found and returned.

If you thought the diplomats might have been killed by the police to prevent the Saudi Arabians from pursuing the investigation, then you would be mistaken, according to the DSI investigators. The Bangkok Post reports:

The DSI took over the investigation into the Saudi murders from police in 2004. The statute of limitations on investigations into the killings falls due early next year.

The police listed three possible motives for the killings: a conflict of interest over sending Thai workers to Saudi Arabia, the illegal export of marijuana, sandalwood and oil to Saudi Arabia through the abuse of diplomatic immunity privileges, and a conflict among mafia-type gangs in Pattaya.

Staff at the Saudi embassy and some outsiders were suspects but the court dropped all charges against them.

Pol Col Tawee said DSI officials believed the murders could have resulted from conflicts between Saudi Arabia and other countries in the Middle East.

Before the killings, Riyadh wrote to Thailand seeking special care for its citizens and diplomats because of threats to their lives and untoward incidents happening to Saudis elsewhere, the DSI chief said.

Both the murders and the theft of Saudi royal jewellery have soured relations between Thailand and Saudi Arabia for almost two decades.

Judging by their "theories," the DSI investigators would appear to have ruled out the possibility that the murders of the Saudi diplomats had some connection with the efforts of the Saudi diplomats to investigate the theft of the jewels (There is little doubt that the jewels were stolen by the police). By the sound of it, the Thai police are off the hook for these murders.

And who the heck is Abu Ali anyway? The suspect is just "a name" in these latest news reports.