Thailand announced that it would take legal action against eight ex-security men in connection with the Tak Bai killings of 2004, where 78 protesters died from suffocation when they were packed like sacks of rice in military trucks after they were arrested.

Wednesday’s announcement of the attorney general’s office is made only several weeks before the case statute of limitations expires on October 25 and after a Thai court last month accepted a complaint related to the case against seven former high-ranking security officials by the victims’ families. 

The suspects could have predicted that their actions would result in the suffocation and death of 78 people who were under their supervision, said the attorney general Prayut Bejaguran at a news briefing.

It is one of the bloodiest that have occurred in the continuing insurgency in Thailand‘s predominantly Southern provinces. The protesters died after they were tear-gassed and detained during a protest near a police station and piled in Thai military trucks, one on top of the other.(More)

At that time, the Thai government headed by Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra provided condolences over the death of the people but vehemently rejected any involvement of foul play. Police, on the other hand, stated at the onset that the protesters had slept with arms.

Over 7,600 people have been killed in Thailand’s southern province, most predominantly Muslims, in nearly 20 years of insurgency along the Malaysian border. 

It is now Thai Primer Minister as last month Thaksin’s daughter, Paetongtarn Shinawatra. Forums will be held again next week targeting other retired military officers in Pattani, Yala, and Narathiwat provinces because some of them are also respondents in the cases filed by the families last week. 

A Narathiwat court has summoned a former military commander and issued warrants of arrest for six retired senior security personnel who refused to show up for a criminal case relating to the families’ complaints. The commander is now a politician with the Pheu Thai Party, the ruling party in Thailand.