KANGAR: Four Thai citizens have been charged under Malaysia’s anti-trafficking laws over mass graves and transit camps for refugees that were found in a remote jungle along the Thai Malaysian border more than eight years ago.
Home Affairs Minister Saifuddin Nasution Ismail said the four Thais were extradited today and were among 10 people that Malaysia had sought for extradition in 2017.
The men – aged between 30 and 58 – arrived in court in Kangar in Malaysia’s northern state of Perlis, according to local media. A court interpreter later read out the charges to them, which together related to the trafficking of two Myanmar nationals – Zedul Islam and Mohd Belai, the paper said. No pleas were recorded. The first of the mass graves – containing more than 30 bodies – was discovered in April 2015 among makeshift camps near the town of Wang Kelian that had been set up by traffickers bringing people across the border. After an intensified search, dozens more graves – many of them Rohingya refugees from Myanmar and containing more than one body – were found.
Thailand and Malaysia carried out a joint investigation into the camps, and Thailand convicted 62 defendants, including nine government officials, over the deaths and trafficking of Rohingya and Bangladeshis to Malaysia via Thailand in 2017.