Police interrogate suspected British man

BANGKOK, September 17 (TNA) - Thai police have interrogated a British man suspected of involving in a brutal murder of two British tourists whose bodies were found earlier this week on a beach of Koh Tao, an island off Surat Thani Province in the Thai South. The suspected British man, Christopher Alan Ware, who is believed to be a friend of 24-year-old David Miller, one of the two victims, was brought to Bangkok for questioning by police on Wednesday, after the owner of a bungalow reportedly told local police that he saw wounds on the suspect's hands and also the victim’s trouser tainted with blood inside his bag. The bungalow owner told police interrogators that he suspected the trouser was hidden by the suspect. Police said they also found pieces of blonde hair in the hands of 23-year-old Hannah Witheridge, the second victim. The British suspect, according to police, told police upon arriving in Bangkok that he wanted to return to Britain, but police asked him to stay longer in Thailand under the police supervision, as police are awaiting DNA tests. Police Major General Dr. Pornchai Sutheerakun, Director of Police General Hospital’s Institute of Forensic Medicine, told reporters that autopsy showed that the two British victims died from hard objects hitting on their heads. Police Major General Dr. Pornchai reported that the 24-year-old male victim died after being hit on his head, while water was also found in his lung and doctors, thus, initially believed the victim was thrown into the sea after being hit by the hard object. Bruises were also found on the victim’s back hands and on his back and it is believed that the bruises were caused by self-defence before he died. For the 23-year-old female victim, Police Major General Dr. Pornchai reported that the victim was hit hard by a sharpened object on her head, while semen was found in her vagina and anal. Doctors at the institute were, in the meantime, checking pieces of hair in her right hand and conducting DNA tests of the two victims, with results expected to be known soon and to be compared with DNA of the suspects whom police had earlier interrogated. Officials from the British Embassy in Bangkok, meanwhile, contacted the Institute's officials, informing them that the embassy wished to take the victim's bodies for funeral rites. In another development, Interior Minister General Anupong Paochinda told journalists that concerned officials have put efforts in finding the murderer and he would order the Surat Thani governor during a meeting on September 18 to help speed up the investigation. The bodies of the two British tourists were found on September 15 on a beach of Koh Tao near renowned Koh Pha-ngan in the Gulf of Thailand off Surat Thani's mainland. (TNA)