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| Southeast Asia | |
| Motorcycle killer describes role in Thai insurgency | |
| 2004-08-30 | |
| Sitting on a hospital bed and guarded by comrades of the soldier he murdered, Abdullah Akoh explained his part in southern Thailand's Islamic separatist insurgency. Following orders from the commander of his cell, like him a teacher at an Islamic school, Akoh and a fellow militant fell in behind a pair of soldiers on a motorcycle in Yaha one morning. When their targets slowed down they overtook them and Akoh, the pillion passenger, shot one of the soldiers dead with a 9mm pistol. The two turned back to kill the second serviceman, but their intended victim seized his comrade's M16 rifle and returned fire, hitting Akoh in the leg and stomach. The motorcycle crashed, the driver fled and Akoh, 31, was captured. "I feel sorry," he said in a ward at Ingkayut army camp in Pattani. "It was wrong." While in public everyone professes loyalty to Bangkok, Islamic militants trained, according to the authorities, in the Middle East, have fomented an insurrection that has claimed about 300 lives this year. On the worst day, more than 100 people were killed, the vast majority of them militants armed only with knives, with 32 dying in the Krue Se mosque in Pattani after a siege by the military. Akoh said his commander, Ismail Rayalong, known as Yusuf, "persuaded me to do it. He told me about the historical background." He added: "The Thai government invaded this area so I fought back by killing government officials." Yusuf also persuaded him that reading 70,000 words a day of religious tracts would make him invulnerable to knives or bullets. None the less Akoh, who is married with a seven-month-old son, was ready to accept martyrdom if he was killed fighting for Islam. Unlike the al-Qa'eda-linked Jemaah Islamiyah group, blamed for the Bali bombings, which wants to set up a Islamic caliphate across south-east Asia, Akoh said his group sought autonomy for Pattani under Islamic law. Now he says he believes in peace and that Pattani should remain part of Thailand. "If somebody tries to persuade you to do something like what I did, don't believe them. Think carefully."
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| Posted by:Dan Darling |