No Westerners to be freed under amnesty

PHUKET TOWN: Contrary to earlier expectations, no Westerners are to be released from Phuket Provincial Prison under the terms of the amnesty declared to mark the 72nd birthday of HM The King. A total of 159 people will be released tomorrow at 9 am. Of these, 16 are foreigners, 14 of them Burmese. The remaining two are Korean Jin Yong Piew, 43, sentenced in 1996 to six years’ imprisonment for murder, and 40-year-old Mohammudu Bakari of Tanzania, jailed in 1997 for theft and being in the country illegally. Of the prisoners to be released, 95 were jailed for theft or robbery, 15 for murder or manslaughter, seven for assault occasioning grievous bodily harm, 26 for possession of drugs and 16 for other offences.