And yet another hellish tourist experience from lovely Phuket. The Age provides a decent summary, though most of information seems cribbed from Land of Trails, the official blog of the two university students who were obviously extorted in Phuket. Phuket Post also just regurgitates the original story as posted on the blog, so I'll quote some of their post.
We left the house we were renting in Phuket to have dinner with some friends. At midnight our landlord called to tell us our house was on fire. We rushed back to find everything we owned a smoking ruin. We lost everything, including passports..
During the police investigation the cause, I was interrogated twice and my partner once. After a few weeks, we were informed that the cause had been determined: accidental electrical fire, probably as a result of the air conditioning unit.
Regardless of the first, we had already been planning to leave the county – we had bought our tickets and put in our 2 months notices at work – so we asked them if we were cleared to leave. They said we were, and without any problems we were stamped out of the country.
A month after we left and unbeknownst to us, the original investigator on the case was transferred and the new investigator changed his conclusion, blaming the fire on a lit cigarette and holding us responsible. Though we had given all of our contact information and the police station was just a short drive up the road from my partner’s previous employer, no effort was made to contact us – no phone call, email, written notification in 21 months.
On April 9, along with our friend and my partner’s sister, we arrived in Bangkok for a two-week holiday. When our passports were scanned into the system at immigration a flashing red light went off above our heads and we were taken aside by immigration officers. After twenty minutes or so an officer informed us that we were wanted in Phuket. Of course we asked for details but apparently there was not a single immigration officer who spoke decent English. Eventually an officer called his girlfriend and she told us via his mobile that we were being detained in connection with the house fire and for fleeing the country.
Our passports were taken immediately and we were detained in an office while the immigration police called Phuket to find out more information. We were informed that we would have to be escorted to Phuket and that we would have to pay for the plane ticket for the officer to escort us, which cost 7,000 Baht. That was to be the smallest expense of the whole affair.
Upon our arrival in Phuket we were met by Phuket Provincial police officers in plain clothes and taken directly to Phuket Town Police Station. There we were once again not provided with a translator and not given any means of securing our own. In broken English we were told that we were being charged as criminals; though we were not told specifically what we were being charged with.
After witnessing conversations between several officers, none of which gave us any information, police told us they would have to “control us”, meaning lock us up in a holding cell and set bail at 100,000 Baht each.
At that moment we demanded to speak to the US Embassy. They told us that we were welcome to call the embassy on our phone, which, having been arrested within half an hour of arriving, we didn’t have. They refused to allow us to use their phone to make any phone calls. We were alone.
Demanding again to call the embassy, they said they would call for us. The officer quickly spoke to the duty officer in Thai then hung up – we were not allowed to speak to our embassy. After that we were put into jail cells. I was being held with two other cellmates while my partner was being held alone. The cells were dirty, hot and disgusting – infested with bugs and feces spread on the wall.
After an hour we managed to get the attention of the guard and with great difficulty we were able to make him understand that we wanted to make bail. About two hours later, a lawyer appeared, claiming he had been sent by the US Embassy. The lawyer said he would bail us out and charge us 20,000 Baht for his 10% service fee. Once we were released, we were to transfer 220,000 Baht to him immediately.
Luckily, we were bailed Friday, the day before Songkran, the Thai New Year, which meant that the entire legal system would be shut down for 5 days, leaving us in jail.
Since no effort was made by the Thai authorities to make the situation clear to us we were forced to fall back on our own resources to figure out what was going on. We found out that the charges against us were originating from our former landlord so we arranged to meet with him on the Friday, 17 April, one week after we had been detained. We also arranged a translator, who had worked with a friend of ours.
During that meeting he claimed he didn’t want anything from us. Confused but relieved we agreed to go to the police station so that the situation could be cleared up. However, once we were all at the station, the landlord reversed his position. He demanded that we pay him 1.5 million baht to cover the cost of repairing the house. Despite the fact that he is very successful and well-to-do business owner and my partner and I are just students, he was adamant that we pay.
After hours of attempts to negotiate and plead our desperation and lack of money, we were only able to get him to agree to 1.3 million Baht, or 37,000 US Dollars. Until we paid this, we would not be given our passports.
During this meeting we also found out that our first lawyer had been trying to rob us. His first falsehood was that he had been sent by the embassy. Though the US Embassy told us that they do not send lawyers; they only send a list. The second lie that he told us was that we would only get our 200,000 Baht in bail back if we fought the case in court and won. When we told the police that they laughed in our faces. The only thing the police needed for us to be bailed was a signature from a lawyer. But who contacted the lawyer in the first place? The police.
See the link above to the blog for the conclusion.
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