Thai police have charged a Pakistani in connection with the murder of a British man in Thailand's restive Muslim south region, an official said on Saturday.
A spokesman for the British embassy in Bangkok confirmed on Saturday that Mark Lemetti, 25, was found dead in the southern province of Narathiwat's Sungai Kolok district. Thai police identified the victim as Mark Roland Lemetti.
Thai police investigator Major-Colonel Chalerm Yingkong told Reuters a 25-year-old Pakistani man was detained at his home in Sungai Kolok late on Friday and charged with conspiring with others to rob and kill.
The charge carries the death penalty, which is carried out by lethal injection in Thailand.
"We found several belongings of the victim, namely a mobile phone and a camera when we searched the suspect's house on Friday night," Chalerm said and added "he was so frightened of the police that he went up to the roof to hide, but fell off and injured himself."
Lemetti was believed to be the first Westerner killed in the area since violence flared in January when militants staged a deadly raid on an army camp. More than 300 people have died in nearly daily violence since then.
Chalerm said police were treating the incident as a robbery and not linked to the conflict. He said the suspect, fluent in English, Thai and Malay, was identified only as "Useng" because he did not have an identity document although he had lived in the town for a few years, marrying a Thai wife and selling used clothes for a living.
Police said on Friday they believed Lemetti was mugged and killed then his body dumped in a rubber plantation in Sungai Kolok. A broken snooker cue was found next to his body.
Chalerm said several people at a snooker hall in the town saw Useng with Lemetti several hours before the Briton was found dead early on Friday.
Sungai Kolok, a border town 1,200 km south of Bangkok and known for its sex industry, has been hit twice by bomb attacks since January. No one has been killed in the blasts. Some Western governments, including Britain, have warned their citizens against non-essential travel to Thailand's far southern provinces.
The region was home to a low-key separatist insurgency fought in the 1970s and 1980s, but Bangkok says it cannot pinpoint precisely what or who is behind the current unrest in the mainly Malay-speaking region.
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