Thai police send murder case of Britons to prosecutors

SURAT THANI, THAILAND, October 7 (TNA) - Thai police have sent a case on the murder of two Britons on Koh Tao in the Gulf of Thailand off Surat Thani Province in the Thai South three weeks ago to the public prosecutors for further consideration and prosecution. Police Major General Praveen Pongsirin, Deputy Commander of Provincial Police Region 8, who is also chief investigator in the case, on Tuesday forwarded an official police investigation report to the prosecutors' office on Koh Samui, another popular resort island in Surat Thani. Thai police investigators confirmed that they have had sufficient and solid evidence to take legal action against two Myanmar migrant workers suspected of murdering the two British victims in mid-September. The two Myanmar suspects, identified as Win and Zaw, are now in police custody, while the third Myanmar suspect, who is also in police custody, is being treated as a witness in the case. The bodies of the two British tourists, 23-year-old Hannah Victoria Witheridge and 24-year-old David William Miller, were found on a beach on Koh Tao before dawn on September 15. Both were brutally murdered while Witheridge was also raped. Meanwhile, officials from the Myanmar Embassy in Bangkok and representatives of human rights groups inspected the murder scene and rented houses of the two Myanmar suspects on Koh Tao to follow up the case and to be briefed by police on how their investigation and confessions of the two Myanmar men were made. (TNA)