‘Excessive force’, finds Thai panel

BANGKOK – Thai security forces used excessive force to oust a group of lightly armed Muslims from a mosque in April when peaceful means might have resolved the confrontation, an inquiry said yesterday.

Instead, 32 young men were killed on the most bizarre day of months of violence in the largely Muslim south as troops and police blazed away at the mosque with rocket-propelled grenades, assault rifles and ordinary grenades. The action, “especially the hurling of eight hand grenades into the mosque”, said a four-page summary of the panel’s report, “should be judged, albeit with the benefit of hindsight, to be disproportionate to the threat posed by the militants”.The seven-member panel of Muslim judges, lawyers and academics clearly believed the men who took refuge in the mosque after attacking a police post and making off with several guns would have surrendered.”The tactic of laying siege to the mosque, surrounding it with security personnel, in tandem with the use of negotiation with the militants, could have ultimately led to their surrender,” it said.Altogether, 106 militants were killed on April 28 after a series of coordinated attacks on security posts and public buildings by men few of whom were armed with anything more lethal than a machete.One village lost its 19-member football squad, but the focus of much Muslim anger was the attack on the centuries-old Krue Se mosque in Pattani province.- Nampa-ReutersThe action, “especially the hurling of eight hand grenades into the mosque”, said a four-page summary of the panel’s report, “should be judged, albeit with the benefit of hindsight, to be disproportionate to the threat posed by the militants”.The seven-member panel of Muslim judges, lawyers and academics clearly believed the men who took refuge in the mosque after attacking a police post and making off with several guns would have surrendered.”The tactic of laying siege to the mosque, surrounding it with security personnel, in tandem with the use of negotiation with the militants, could have ultimately led to their surrender,” it said.Altogether, 106 militants were killed on April 28 after a series of coordinated attacks on security posts and public buildings by men few of whom were armed with anything more lethal than a machete.One village lost its 19-member football squad, but the focus of much Muslim anger was the attack on the centuries-old Krue Se mosque in Pattani province.- Nampa-Reuters