Thai police claim Muslim man took own life in cell

By PS Waller

BANGKOK (AA) – Thai Police claimed Thursday that a Muslim man took his own life after he was found hanging in his cell Tuesday, hours after being detained for allegedly delivering a bomb to an army outpost.

Lt. Gen. Suchad Choosangkit, regional army police commander in Thailand's south, told a Bangkok press conference that police had found 51-year-old Somjit Jarae dead in his Yala police cell at 10.30 p.m. (1530GMT) Tuesday.

Yala is one of three provinces -- Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat -- wracked by a Muslim insurgency.

Jarae had been detained and held for questioning earlier in the day in Yala's Yaha district when the parcel he was delivering was discovered to be a bomb with a remote detonator.

Choosangkit said that Jarae had told officers that an anonymous person had asked him to deliver the parcel and maintained that he had no idea what was inside.

Rights groups have accused Thai authorities in the past of torture of insurgency suspects in their custody.

In 2014, Thailand's National Human Rights Council released a report outlining several cases of serious injury to suspects while in Military custody.

Additionally, Human Rights Watch released a report in June 2016 calling for the military government to end judicial harassment of human rights investigators looking into allegations of torture.

"Covering up torture and other crimes by targeting human rights activists only undermines efforts to improve the security situation in the Deep South," said Brad Adams, Human Rights Watch's Asia Director.

The southern insurgency is rooted in a century-old ethno-cultural conflict between Malay Muslims living in the southern region and the Thai central state where Buddhism is considered the de-facto national religion.

Armed insurgent groups were formed in the 1960s after the then-military dictatorship tried to interfere in Muslim schools, but the insurgency faded in the 1990s.

Since a rejuvenated armed movement emerged in 2004, violence has continued unabated, leaving more than 6,200 dead and around 11,000 injured.