There is no media crime, diplomatic crisis, fat case of drug trafficking or human trafficking in thailandin which it does not appear Big Joke To solve it. Or rather, as some of his critics say, she enters the scene to be in the photo and get the applause for the work that other colleagues do. Officially, it is the national fire extinguisher. The plunger of the Thai lumpen. The spotlights are always looking for him. And he is not averse to the attention of the cameras.
If a woman is arrested in April for killing 14 people with cyanide, our protagonist appears there to give all the details. If a Chinese citizen is kidnapped in March, he is there to announce that the kidnappers have been arrested and that, in addition, a network of corrupt policemen who helped Chinese mafias to establish themselves in Thailand have been uncovered. If four years ago a young Saudi caused a political storm by arriving in the country fleeing from her family after renouncing Islam and assuring that she would be killed if she was repatriated, our man offers her shelter as a refugee.
Big Joke (“big joke”) is the nickname that the Thai media gave to Surachate Hakparn for the light-hearted, at times burlesque tone with which he has publicly confronted many of Thailand’s loudest police investigations in recent years. Surachate (54 years old) is the current deputy director of the royal policehe number two of the body in the Southeast Asian country.
In spainhis name has been repeated in many crime reports for personally supervising the crime on Koh Phangan: he arrived at the beginning of August on this tourist island anchored in the Gulf of Thailand to verify that local investigators had enough tied up that the Spanish chef Daniel Sancho had murdered and dismembered the Colombian surgeon Edwin Arrieta. After a quick check and a walk in front of the cameras, Surachate returned to his headquarters. Bangkok.
But if there was any doubt about the importance Thai authorities attach to this case, Surachate, who was ordained a Buddhist monk in Indiaarrived in Koh Phangan by helicopter on Tuesday to direct the press conference announcing the closure of an investigation that accuses Sancho of premeditated murder and that calls for the death penalty for the Spaniard.