BANGKOK, Sept 2 (Reuters) - Thailand is working on a formal request to extradite a Singaporean charged with membership of the Jemaah Islamiah militant network so he can join four Thais on trial for plotting attacks, a prosecutor said on Thursday. The prosecutor, who declined to be identified, told Reuters the extradition request would be finished in the "next few months".
Special Branch Police Colonel Pirapong Duangamporn told reporters last year Thailand had asked for the extradition of Arifin bin Ali, arrested in Thailand and sent to Singapore where he is being held under tough security laws. But the prosecutor said police had only now made a formal request that the Thai government seek Arafin's extradition. "We are working on this request, but we have other priorities," he said. | "He ain't going no where." |
Arifin, 43 and also known as John Wong Ah Hung, is charged with conspiring with the four Thai Muslims to bomb Asian and Western embassies in Bangkok and the beach resorts of Phuket and Pattaya. The court trying the four was told by a prosecution witness on Tuesday that Arifin, charged in absentia, had intended to die in a suicide attack on one of his planned targets. Last month, another prosecution witness quoted Arifin as saying he had wanted to attack a major regional summit in Bangkok attended by U.S. President George W. Bush last year. The Singapore government says he was a senior member of the Singapore unit of the al Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiah, which has been accused of several bomb attacks in Southeast Asia, including the 2002 Bali nightclub blasts which killed 202 people. | Senior members keep saying how they are willing to die, but never seem to fit it into their schedule. |
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