THAILAND. EX-POLICE GENERAL GETS DEATH SENTENCE IN SAUDI JEWEL HEIST CASE

former Lt. Gen. Chalor Kerdthed was sentenced to death by a Thai appeals court for masterminding the killing of two family members of a gem trader linked to a 1989 jewel theft in Saudi Arabia.
Chalor, a police colleague and two other men had received life sentences from the Bangkok Criminal Court in 2002 for the abduction and killing of the wife and 14-year-old son of gem trader Santi Srithanakhan. The Appeals Court reversed one of the sentences and ordered 69-year-old Chalor be put to death. The judge upheld the sentences for the other three defendants. The prosecution had appealed the criminal court decision. The jewels had been stolen from a prince's palace in Saudi Arabia by a Thai worker and most were never recovered, a fact that continued to strain Thai-Saudi relations. The worker smuggled the gems to Thailand, but sold them before he was apprehended. Some of the gems turned up in the possession of various dealers, including Santi, who helped nail the original thief. Widespread rumors during the heyday of the case had it that at least some gems were recovered, but diverted to the hands of various influential figures in government and society.
Chalor, then a deputy police commissioner in charge of the investigation, pressured Santi to find more of the gems by kidnapping his wife and child in 1994.
Known as a hard-charging investigator willing to cut corners, it was never clear if Chalor's superiors acquiesced to the tactic because of the pressure they were under to solve the case for diplomatic reasons.
The bodies of Santi's wife and child were found in a wrecked automobile, but forensic evidence found that it was staged to look like an accident.
Chalor and his colleagues were arrested afterward and accused of extorting a ransom from Santi, and then killing his wife and child. Santi and three other gem dealers were convicted of handling stolen property.