Sabre

Hooray!

I would like to see all the tourists and others who were stranded, and all the business who suffered economic loss, get a class action started.

Does anyone know what happened to the criminal charges against the PAD leaders?

Excellent post.

Do we know what happened, if anything, to his police chum in Soi 9? Whilst he is no doubt innocent of anything, it does leave a nasty smell and raise questions about your judgement when your assistant is convicted of a serious crime.

You mean this guy Pornkit?

(The guy on the left)

No idea, but it must be a huge embarrassment at the very least.

As I understand it the Pattaya BiB are generally a law unto themselves. hel_l, maybe he was the one who arranged for John to get nicked ... you just never know.

Scum bag no doubt and deserves more than he will get, dealing and abusing a position of trust are not to be tolerated, however I often wonder how many of us if we were policemen on crap pay and having temptation flaunted at us every day can hand on heart be 100% certain they would not stray? I am not talking about Thailand but your home country, here its common knowledge but I think if we really knew the depth of corruption at home we would be suprised (UK for me)

I think of myself as honest and trustworthy however I would be lying if I said I was certain I would never be tempted if the situation arose and the circumstances were against me, debt, divorce, and many other pressures of life we should all be able to deal with and probably have but were never in a position of temptation like most police are daily.

Ill get lots of flack I am sure just be honest before shooting me down and think of all possible scenarios. Just remember Jack Regan our hero of the 70's and now considered corupt by todays standards as well as the recent program Life on Mars

You're absolutely right but let's not get this guy confused with a normal Thai copper.

First he was getting disability from Norway. So he is already sucking from the teat of others, and receives about three times what the average Thai copper gets in a month, just because he is retarded or whatever it is.

Second he has a gogo bar in pattaya - Ingos - so he's making money from the sex trade. And this guy was not just the owner of a bar, from all reports he was making trips into the north of the country to find and recruit girls to go and work in Pattaya.

Third he was employed as the 'personal assistant' to a high-ranking cop in pattaya (after he was kicked out of the tourist police volunteers). And I am told they made quite a team. Squeezing money out of Thais and foreigners alike.

Fourth he is peddling his 'influence' with the cops through his Johnipattaya consultancy. Look on his website. What he means when he says he can help with police work (translations) is that he can help with police work (bribes, thuggery, and who knows what else).

Then of course he is also selling drugs to tourists, relying upon his police connections as some sort of immunity from prosecution.

He was also an agent for Hvidsten, a 'controversial' property developer (to put it mildly) selling to impressionable Norwegians who visited his gogo bar and were impressed by his swagger (some guys must think that carrying a concealed .38 around is cool).

Who knows what else this guy was involved in?

It is not surprising that he was not well liked. We are not talking about a Thai constable squeezing motorists for a few hundred Baht, this guy was up to his neck in corruption and dirty dealings, and had his finger in many dirty pies. It wasn't just circumstances and bad luck that got this guy landed in jail. He had it coming to him.

Apart from insensitivity sems extremely disrespectful.

Nobody has queried perhaps this known drug smuggler had come for another run or to be paid off for the first one.

It is more likely she is milking it for another book.

The original sentance would have saved everyone a great deal of time and trouble.

People like her in the media give all falangs a bad reputation.

Hopefully she 'll be detained or deterred elsewhere.

Obviously she has no shame or khreng jai consciousness despite a 2nd rate UK education.

If her pardon is overturned in the future can she be extradited to face the original penalty?

Keep away please drug trafficking teachers are not required here.

Forgive my bluntness, but I discern that you may not be in the best position to criticise the quality of another's education.

The consul that issued that visa has some 'splainin to do. A major lapse in judgement.

Although sympathetic to her statement, <deleted> was she thinking? It was obvious someone was going to say no at some point. The Thai government, any government for that matter, doesn't want this type of visitor.

Not sure if a consul has a list of evey person blacklisted.

Remember, getting a visa only means you are allowed to travel to Thailand and ask for permission to enter. It does not mean you will get that permission. The permission to enter is a seperate thing, which can be denied.

This is correct.

A visa is a conditional permit to enter a country. It is permission with strings attached. One of the conditions being, I suppose, that the immigration official actually decides to let you in.

Presumably this person was hoping that she would not be picked up by the system. I suppose after a few years in a Thai jail she figured that she could endure a few days in the immigration detention centre if her gamble failed.

Personally I think I can understand what she might have been thinking - she has obviously been trying to make a new life for herself, earning her university degree and so forth, and she probably felt that she needed some closure at the Thai 'end' of things, in order to properly move on with life.

I think those who are calling her a 'junkie' trying to get more drugs are both misinformed (she was a mule, not a junkie), and ought to try and think a bit before making snap judgements about others.

The line between 'them' and 'us' is never as definite, or as impermeable, as one might imagine.

Oh man, this sounds like trouble. Have you actually confirmed that there is a 10 year ban in place? I'm sure you could hire an immigration lawyer in the UK who could look into the story, and appeal the 10-year ban.

Her story may well be true, but I would advise double checking everything anyway, because even if she is telling the truth, there are a number of other reasons why the information she has given you might not be completely accurate.

Cambodia's recent activities with Thaksin really scaring thai gov......i wonder why..

Just use instead of Thailand and Cambodia, France and Germany or Czech republic and Hungary. You would get very similar reactions.

Or think Venezuela makes Bin Laden to his adviser.

Well hang on a minute, Thaksin is not really someone who can be sensibly compared to Bin Laden in that way.

Thaksin is the guy that would probably still win an election if one were held tomorrow, having won the past 3 or 4. He was convicted of fraud, by a puppet-judiciary, and although he is probably guilty of much more, within the circus of Thailand's corrupt political system he was playing by the 'rules'. Joke that it was, Thaksin was Thai democracy personified.

I'm not a supporter, not at all, but I despise hypocrisy in all its forms and everything the power elite have done since the day of the coup in Thailand has been pure hypocrisy. If Thailand's ruling class really believed any of what it is saying they would stop squabbling like hungry seagulls and start trying to solve some of the problems that are plaguing Thailand right now.

The complete and utter lack of surprise on my wifes face when I showed her and she read this says everything.

This reminds me of police academy somehow. You can just see it, some new recruits are playing a mischievous prank and load in twice as much charge ... the uppity second-in-command gets egg on his face, and thus his plans to usurp the doddering yet loveable commandant are thwarted.

So a tank round landed in a school? No harm done, we'll try not to do it again next week when we give the recruits their first HE rounds....

Where is John these days? Was he allowed to abscond like the Aussie swindler?

I read on one of the Norwegian forums that he is still in remand prison. The police have 84 days or something to bring formal charges but there are probably ways they can extend that period. I also read that he had applied for bail twice but that it had been refused - I guess that's no surprise when you get caught with enough heroin to receive a death sentence. Still, with enough hard currency I'm sure he could arrange things so that he was allowed to slip quietly out of the country, so maybe he's now in Cambodia, carrying on his fine tradition of police volunteering there .

It has also become known that he has been collecting welfare from the Norwegian government while living and working in Pattaya. Some sort of condition where he was certified as 'mentally unstable' or something similar - no joke. Maybe that was the 'dark past' we keep hearing about.

Sorry, the Norwegian developer was called Arne Hvidsten

The Norwegians call their hired thugs 'torpedoes' and yes this guy is/was a 'torpedo' of said developer.

Even a good lawyer won't be able to help very much.

Your friend needs to earnestly negotiate with the police and the family. You need some kind of negotiator, more than a lawyer. Don't assume a lawyer will be able to do this for you.

In these matters the police, in many ways, ARE the judges. Start paying, because it will only get more expensive and it may come to the point where paying is no longer an option.

Take the money your friend was going to spend on legal fees, and give it straight to the biggest cop you can find at the relevant station. A more efficient way of spending it.

That cop should the help you to get the price down, with the family.