One month ago, Central Investigation Bureau anti-trafficking in-persons division ( ATPD ) officers spent a month searching through numerous files to find the final suspect in a ten-year-old human trafficking case. A picture of an unidentified girl was all they had to look up.
” It is a difficult task task but if we did not do it, who do”, said Pol Maj Gen Sarut Kwaengsopha, chief of the ATPD, after his staff arrested the suspect in Samut Prakan on Wednesday.
On Sept 16, he signed an order for Pol Col Korkiat Wuthijumnong, the director of Sub-Division 1, to assault Sompong Soithong, 62, in accordance with a Criminal Court imprisonment permit dated Dec 19, 2014. Pol Lt Col Burin Kapittha, an investigator, made the arrest under Pol Col Korkiat’s purchase.
Above: Police arrest Sompong Soithong, left, in Samut Prakan last year.
She had been charged with colluding to customers in humans through forced labour, simultaneously detaining, threatening, or using pressure to deprive others of their natural liberty, colluding to imprison or produce others in a similar state, bringing people into or sending them out of the kingdom, and selling, distributing or detaining a person.
When Pol Maj Gen Sarut directed his crew to search for outdated arrest warrants, events started to lead to the imprisonment.
He argued that “everyone who engages in labor trafficking may be executed,” cases that are “extremely harsh and treat victims as if they are not people. We must jail everyone who is involved in the old situations.
The arrest team’s leader, Pol Col Korkiat, claimed he assigned Pol Lt Col Burin to search for outdated arrest warrants for situations involving aggressive behavior.
His team finally found one demanding situation involving a middle-aged girl, with just a picture drawn from the victim’s statement. No single knew her name.
Burin: Victims were promised fine give
According to Pol Lt Col Burin, officers with the ATPD learned from the Department of Social Development and Welfare in 2012 that there were victims of unlawful labor agents posing as prostitutes on fishing boats with the promise of great pay.
But, when the patients arrived in the Pak Nam Samut Prakan place, they were taken to a karaoke bar and forced to sign a slave-like deal, he said, adding they were confined in a chamber and ordered not to leave.
In Malaysia’s middle of the ocean, they were transferred to other boats before being transferred to a fishing boat.
According to him, the boat captain forced the victims to perform labor, with one of them nearly being beaten to death and thrown from the water.
The victim sat in the water for three days before being taken to the Indian Port of Kandla by a Vietnamese cargo ship for rescue.
The victim was later sent back to Thailand. In total, he spent several months making the journey home.
Officers from the Crime Suppression Division 1 gathered evidence and examined the five arrest warrants.
Police had arrested four of them but one had escaped, and officers only had a sketch of a middle-aged woman drawn from the victim’s statement.
The investigating team discovered that the arrested suspects had mentioned the name of a woman and that the police had a connection to the most likely criminal at large after looking through the files.
They concluded that the name might be that of the woman in the sketch because there is no arrest warrant for it at this time.
” As a result, we looked up the 62-year-old woman’s name in the system and discovered that two people with similar names and ages were present”, Pol Col Korkiat said.
” This led us to believe that one of the people was most likely the same as the one who was portrayed in our sketch.”
” Finding the true offender between the two is what matters most, “he added”. That’s challenging, of course.”
Police contacted the victim who gave the statement at the time to check Ms. Sompong’s identity.
After looking up the victim’s name in the police database, it became clear that he was wanted on more than 10 arrest warrants, including for drug trafficking.
The investigation team then made a second choice, meeting those who had been found guilty, including one who was able to file for bail while battling the Supreme Court, he claimed.
He claimed that they acknowledged that Ms. Sompong was one of the people involved in the human trafficking case and that she was also the same person as him in the sketch.
In Samut Prakan, which is close to the scene of the incident, police discovered her working as a grocery seller 12 years ago.
When approached by police, she denied she was the person named in the warrant. However, she later admitted to being the middleman who conned victims from various bus stations and gave them to a karaoke bar in the area for money after being interrogated.
She claimed to have completed it for hundreds of people. As for the victims ‘ final destination, she said she did not know the details.
Ms. Sompong also informed the police that she had been detained and charged with human trafficking in a separate case, and that she had received a three-year prison sentence prior to being released and detained once more in this case.
” This case is a classic example of how the team’s efforts and a simple sketch can find the culprit,” Pol Col Korkiat said.
Investigators should concentrate on the numerous sketches in pending cases, according to Pol Lt Col Burin, who headed the investigation.
Based on the sketches,” the investigation can be expanded,” he said.
Korkiat: ‘ Finding the offender matters ‘