BAAN SUSOE, Thailand (Reuters) - The shooting of an entire team of 19 soccer players from the same Muslim village in southern Thailand after they attacked a security checkpoint has left relatives stunned, mystified and outraged.
| Yesterday, they were portrayed as poor innocent soccer playing schoolboys who got in the way. |
Revelations about the soccer team give a disturbing insight into the minds if not the motives of those involved in Wednesday's violence, in which troops shot dead 108 machete and gun-toting militants after coming under attack. Three days after defending their annual county soccer title, the "All Stars" team of Baan Susoe village near the Malaysian border mounted nine motorcycles and rode 23 km (15 miles) through the night to launch a dawn attack on a security checkpoint.
| Junior Motorcycles of Doom All Star team. |
They planned to steal weapons from the soldiers, local people said, but armed only with machetes against the automatic rifles of Thai troops who had already been tipped off, they didn't stand a chance. Five members of the security forces were killed. One of the youths, who were all aged between 19 and 26, managed to strike a soldier with his blade. The rest were all shot dead before they even got close.
| That's what happens when you bring a knife to a gunfight. |
Relatives of one of the dead, 20-year-old Kamaruding Baeprommi, told Reuters he had had the potential to become a soccer superstar for Thailand's national team.
| "Had" being the operative word. |
"He started playing soccer when he was eight and was very good," said Pitaya Baeprommi, Kamaruding's elder brother and head of the village sports club.
"He had the potential to become a national superstar so I encouraged him to go into the army and play soccer. He represented his barracks in an army regional tournament," Pitaya said.
| So he was in the Thai army? |
There was no sign that his younger brother, whose 21-year-old wife Koriya Samae was three months pregnant with their first child, would have committed a crime until the eve of the attack, Pitaya said. "On that night he came home from his wife's with a suitcase and told his mother that he would go on a Dahwah," Pitaya said, referring to an Islamic religious mission.
| Friends don't let friends do islam |
Government officials said tests had shown four of the "All Stars" used a heady mixture of methamphetamine and marijuana before launching the motorcycle raid.
| Dope up the kids and point them into the guns. |
"We also found prayer beads and five commandments written in the Malay dialect, Yawi, in their backpacks," local district official Suvej Taepee, told Reuters.
Four of the 19 men had also been teachers at an Islamic primary school in the village, he said.
Residents acknowledged the "All Stars" might well have smoked marijuana, a habit common throughout the impoverished area, but they described their friends as "local heroes," as dedicated to Islam as they were to soccer.
| Funny, I thought dedicated muslims didn't do drugs? |
"This is excessively brutal," said Sutha Lohpanasa, 35, a teacher at a school in a nearby village whose 19-year-old nephew was also among the dead. "Every single one of them had bullets in their heads. The officers knew nothing about human rights. They were all sharp-shooters," he said.
| My compliments to the Thai Army. |
"My nephew and many of his friends were good lads. His daily life was going to school, praying, and practicing soccer. We knew nothing of his bad behavior."
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