Fake passports are big business in Thailand. Source: Wikimedia
Three men holding US and British passports have been charged after a sliced-up body was discovered in a freezer in Bangkok.
Three men were arrested at a building in the Phra Khanong district on Friday where firearms and ammunition were also discovered, police said.
Two men aged 33 and 66 had US passports, while a third held both British and US documents.
One of the men grabbed a firearm and reportedly fired during the police raid, injuring an officer, Thai police said.
Colonel Kissana Phathanacharoe said: “We managed to find a big freezer. We opened it and found a dead body inside it. The body was chopped into different parts. It was concealed in many rubbish bags and put in the freezer.”
Kissana said the three men were charged with offences, including concealment of a body, obstruction of justice, possession of fraudulent passports and possession of drugs, including ketamine and crystal meth.
A couple from Myanmar were also arrested, saying they had been hired to clean the four-storey building three times a week but were told not to open the freezer. The couple had not been been charged and were being treated as witnesses, the authorities said.
Forensic officers were expected to have an autopsy report prepared by Monday on what is believed to be a foreign male corpse. The men were suspected to be part of a passport forgery gang.
In February, Thailand’s police claimed to have arrested an Iranian known as “the Doctor”, who created forged passports from his Bangkok suburb and sold them globally to gangsters, insurgents and refugees.
Southern Thailand remains gripped by terror with a homemade bomb killing three police officers on Friday.
Pongsak Khaonuan, a police investigator in Yala province, said the bomb was detonated as their car drove over it, killing the three instantly. A fourth police officer was taken to a hospital with injuries. Police said they believed Muslim insurgents carried out the strike.
More than 6,000 people have been killed since the insurgency flared up in 2004 in Thailand’s three southern, Muslim-majority provinces. Roadside bombings and drive-by shootings are the most common forms of attack and the authorities have covered the provinces with soldiers.
Attacks continue as the government holds peace talks in neighbouring Malaysia with representatives of separatist groups.
This month, a bomb derailed a train in the south, killing one person and injuring another. A separate explosion outside a school killed three, including a father and his daughter.
