Police ordered not to name nationalities, arrest Swedish man with gun and meth

The Royal Thai police have given foreign troublemakers a bit of a Christmas gift. In an order put out late on Christmas Eve, the RTP told all provincial police bureaus to no longer release to the media the nationality of any foreigner arrested in Thailand.

A spokesperson for the Royal Thai Police said that people accused of a crime in Thailand will no longer be identified by their nationality when information is released to the media. Anyone tried and convicted through the Thai legal system in a court of law would not be protected by this new order. It only applies to those who are accused but not yet charged.

The spokesperson said that ambassadors from some countries that he did not name made the request for police to stop publicizing the arrest of their citizens in Thailand. They said that the positive image of their countries can be harmed by these allegations when the person accused of committing a crime is identified by their country of origin.

The new order is not a law and they did not make it illegal for the media to report the nationality of a foreigner, notes the Pattaya News. They’re just asking police not to release that information or to identify people in terms of their nationality (for example, “a British man” or “a Russian woman”).

NATIONALITY NAMED

In an unrelated story, a person who the Pattaya Police identified as “a Swedish man” was arrested yesterday on Pattaya Beach with crystal meth and a loaded gun. The 43-year old man was stopped by police who asked to search him as they suspected that he may have a gun.

The incident took place on South Pattaya Beach by Soi 13/3. Police were suspicious of his green backpack and he was also carrying a second dark backpack. In the smaller dark backpack, police found a bag of crystal meth. And in the bigger bag, the Swedish man was carrying a Colt Defender .380 gun. The gun was loaded with five bullets and an extra box of bullets was stored in the same backpack.

Police took the Swedish man, whose nationality they released incidentally, into custody and questioned him. He had just been in Thailand for about a week when he was arrested, having entered the country on December 18. It was reported that he tested positive for an unconfirmed drug.

When asked about the gun and bullets, he said that he found them in a local go-go bar in a plastic box. When he found them, he decided he would just keep them.

He has now been charged with carrying a gun in public, possession of an unregistered firearm and ammunition, and taking illegal drugs.