Crime
Immigration Police Catch Israeli Convicted of Murder Trying to Re-Enter Thailand for the 5th Time
BANGKOK – Pol Lt Gen Sompong Chingduang, acting commissioner of Thailand’s Immigration bureau has told a press briefing on Monday that immigration officers have apprehended an Israeli man previously convicted of murder at the Rong Kluea border market in Sa Kaeo’s Aranyaprathet district last Tuesday.
Yahel “Eli” Maimon Cohen, 49, was apprehended Tuesday after the immigration police learned he had re-entered Thailand using another passport with a tourist visa.
Mr. Cohen was deported from Thailand after a Royal Pardon on May 15, 2013, and prohibited from re-entering indefinitely, said Pol Lt Gen Sompong.
On Feb 23, 2004, Cohen was sentenced to life imprisonment for murdering his wife, dismembering her corpse and dumping the chopped up parts, stuffed in a suitcase, in Phadung Krung Kasem canal in Bangkok, said Pol Lt Gen Sompong.
Cohen was eventually released from jail in 2013 after a series of jail term reductions granted to him over the nine years he was serving his sentence, said Pol Lt Gen Sompong.
The immigration police chief said Cohen confessed he had changed his name so he could return to Thailand, after having failed four times under his old name.
He returned to Thailand with a passport under a different name, Eli Maimon Cohen, and prior to his arrest had been trying to secure work at a foreign company in Thailand so that he could stay longer in the country, said Pol Lt Gen Sompong.
Meanwhile, a Cambodian national, was detained and charged with possessing a fake work visa after he showed a forged document at Aranyaprathet immigration checkpoint in Sa Kaeo on Monday.
A Bu, 30, claimed he wasn’t aware the document was fake and said he had paid a Cambodian visa broker 18,000 baht to have his expired visa renewed, said Pol Col Benchaphon Rotsawat, chief of the Sa Kaeo immigration police.
In another case disclosed at the press conference, a Myanmar national, Tin Mar Lwin, 40, was on Jun 9 detained, along with 7 other immigrants from the country, while travelling together in a van in Kanchanaburi province’s Sai Yok district.
She was charged with trafficking in persons while the seven immigrants were treated as victims of human trafficking and are receiving protection, said Pol Lt Gen Sompong.
She admitted to helping the seven, who planned to work in Bangkok, enter Thailand in Sangkhla Buri district, said Pol Lt Gen Sompong.
