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Thai local official beheaded in revenge for deaths of Muslims
A local Buddhist official was beheaded by suspected Muslim insurgents as revenge for the deaths of 85 rioters in Thailand's mainly Muslim south last week, police said Tuesday. The head of Jaran Torae, an assistant village leader, was left Tuesday on a roadside with a letter attached saying the killers were avenging the deaths of Muslim rioters in a confrontation with government forces, said police Lieut. Krit Boonyarith. Police found Jaran's corpse in a rubber plantation about a kilometre from where his head was discovered, Krit said.

"This is dire revenge for the innocent Muslim youths who were massacred at the Tak Bai protest," the handwritten letter reportedly said. Jaran, 58, an official in Sukhirin district of Narathiwat province, went missing late Monday, police said. He was shot in the chest, and police believed his head was cut off after his death.

Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra's government has come under severe domestic and international criticism for its handling of the riot. The army general in charge of security in the south - seen as a hardliner against Muslim insurgents there - was transferred to an inactive post Tuesday. Narathiwat is one of three Muslim-dominated provinces in the south that have been racked by violence the government blames on Muslim militants seeking a separate state. More than 400 people, many of them policemen, have died this year in the region. Muslims account for about five per cent of predominantly Buddhist Thailand's population.
Posted by: Seafarious 2004-11-02
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=47635