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Southeast Asia
Thailand releases 178 terror suspects, married couple shot dead
2007-11-18
[Thailand's] Fourth Army has backed down and reversed its six-month ban on 384 Muslim men suspected of being involved in the terrorist separatist insurgency from re-entering the four jihad violence-plagued southern provinces, in exchange for only a written promise to cooperate against terror cells violent gangs.

According to a letter to Surat Thani governor Winai Buapradit, Fourth Army chief Lt-Gen Wiroj Buacharoon said the ban was lifted for the sake of the Dec 23 election and the annual haj pilgrimage to Mecca. As Thai citizens, those who were banned from re-entering the restive southern provinces should be allowed to exercise their voting rights and go on their spiritual pilgrimage to the holy city in Saudi Arabia, he said. This was seen as a face-saving excuse for a military backdown over the banishment order. There was no indication any of the men intended to go to Mecca. They had argued earlier they had no money and could not exist outside their home provinces.

Some 384 people were on the list of suspected terror insurgent sympathisers banned from returning to the far South. The men were forcibly taken to military training camps earlier this year after the authorities did not have enough evidence to charge them. They were originally detained for suspected involvement in the terrorist separatist movement, either actively or as sympathisers. The army put them in three military camps - in Chumphon, Ranong and Surat Thani - under a four-month vocational training programme.
Posted by:ryuge

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