Police on Friday arrested the mayor of southern border subdistrict Padang Besar, alleging he was the kingpin of a Songkhla province human-trafficking ring that ran detention camps where the graves of dozens of Rohingya Muslim migrants were found over the past week.
Banjong Pongphol turned himself in to police on Friday even as a warrant for his arrest was being sought, said deputy police chief Aek Angsananont.
Police also arrested Supoj Muensew, an alleged hitman for the trafficking gang. The deputy chief said that the ring was involved in two murders in Satun province and tambon Padang Besar in Songkhla's Sadao district.
He refused to elaborate on the connection between Mr Banjong and Mr Supoj.
National police chief Pol Gen Somyot Pumpunmuang said today that the alleged hitman had been ordered to kill anyone who obstructed the trafficking of migrants from Myanmar and Bangladesh.
Police have identified 36 suspects in the smuggling of the migrants through Thailand and on to Malaysia. Pol Gen Aek said 12 suspects remained at large.
Those in custody include two local policemen: Pol Lt Mongkol Suro, head of a border-patrol police platoon, and Pol Snr Sgt Maj Asaneeran Nualrod, a squad leader at the Padang Besar police station.
Other suspects were local community leaders, local politicians and administrators, Pol Gen Aek said.
He insisted that authorities would continue to comb the mountains along a 16-kilometre Thai-Malaysian borderline in Songkhla and Satun provinces, and guard the Satun coast to stop trafficking.
Pol Maj Gen Phutthichat Ekachan, deputy commissioner of the Provincial Police Region 9, said Friday that authorities had found four trafficking camps and 55 surviving migrants so far.
Of the aliens, 24 are Rohingya from Myanmar, 15 Bangladeshis and 16 others whose nationalities were unknown. Authorities also found 33 bodies at the abandoned detention camps.
On Friday afternoon, officials rounded up 60 starving Bangladeshi men while they were walking in a rubber plantation near the Tone-Plew waterfall in Tha Chamuang sub-district of Rattaphum district, Songkhla.
They said their traffickers left them to walk to Malaysia by themselves and they had arrived by sea in Satun from Myanmar and walked there for more than 10 days.
Dozens of illegal Bangladeshi migrants are rounded up in Rattaphum district, Songkhla, on Friday. (Photo by Wichayant Boonchote)