Arms supplier for contract killing in Patong arrested

Officers from the Central Investigation Bureau (CIB) of the Thai police have arrested a second suspect in the contract killing of an alleged member of Swedish organized crime in Patong. Following the hitman's arrest, a man who supplied him with the weapon for the assassination was apprehended. The alleged member of Swedish ethnic crime, whose name has not been released, was killed in Patong on February 7. The killer was arrested red-handed on February 8 at a hotel near Phuket International Airport, where he was awaiting a flight to Qatar. According to today's CIB press release, the weapon supplier was identified quickly. On February 12, the Phuket Provincial Court issued an arrest warrant for a 33-year-old man named Amir, a British passport holder. The charges included aiding and abetting premeditated murder and all other articles under which a case was initiated against Fernando Sanchez, the direct killer. Amir was only arrested on May 15. The man was located in a condominium in Pattaya; he had not left the country in the three months since the murder. The arrest was carried out by officers from the CSD, the CIB's anti-crime unit specializing in high-risk operations. Photographs from the operational activities show that during a search of the man's apartment, police seized a large sum of cash, but no weapons were visible in the pictures. "Police believe the roots of the murder lie in a conflict within an international drug cartel," CIB writes. Two days before Amir's arrest (May 13), weapons caches were uncovered. Four identical Glock pistols, a CZ pistol, and 100 rounds of ammunition were stored in a locker rented by a certain Elmi Ahmed Mohamed. Like Ameer Mundher Mamood, who was shot in February, the man holds Swedish citizenship. Officers opened Elmi Ahmed Mohamed's locker after four months had passed since the last payment. Counting from May 13, the last payment was made on January 13, and by February 13, the man had already failed to pay for storage.