Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing recent reports of two foreign nationals being arrested in Thailand on notice from Interpol. I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the Bangkok Post, bangkokpost.com, the article is titled: Police nab two French Interpol targets in Asok. Now, a friend of mine actually sent me this link who actually is French, and some Brits and some other folks have pointed this out in the last couple of months. I have done reports on a British person arrested or an X-person arrested; that is based on their passport. And as pointed out, when you get into the ethnic background of some of these people, it might not be what one would think when one thinks of as a Frenchman. That is neither here nor there. It's just sort of the evolving nature of nationality, especially in the West, but here we are. Quoting directly: "Immigration Police on Tuesday arrested two French nationals wanted by authorities in France, with one of them reportedly listed on an international warrant for alleged involvement in organized crime, drug trafficking and money laundering. Pol Lt Gen Panumas Boonyalak, Commissioner of the Immigration Bureau (IB), and Pol Maj Gen Phanthana Nuchanart, Deputy Commissioner, ordered investigators under Immigration Division 3, to track down two suspects identified as Abdulrahim, who is around 35 years old, and Mustafa, 33, both French citizens and the subject of arrest warrants issued by French Authorities. Mr. Abdulrahim, sources said, is the subject of an Interpol Red Notice on charges including illegal importation and distribution of narcotics, participation in a transnational criminal organization and money laundering."

So again, the first thing to note here is that hey Thai law enforcement is pretty keen to deal with Interpol Red Notices. If you have got an Interpol Red Notice and it comes through to Thai Authorities here in Thailand, this isn't some No Man's Land out here where it's not going to come back and get you. They are going to pretty quickly assess whether or not that person may be in the country. If it looks like they possibly are, they are going to investigate further, and as in this case, they are going to find where the folks are at and they are going to detain, arrest and deport them. As I get into it in another video made contemporaneously with this one, there are specific immigration protocols that can be triggered in order to expedite deportation in such matters; again I'll leave the details to that to that other video. 

But the point of this one is one) we are seeing a large influx of foreign “Western” criminals which as friends of mine have pointed out, is a bit of - it is not exactly a misnomer - if you are going purely by passport yes, they have the nationality that they have, but, when you look at some of the background of these folks, you have to wonder are they really all that connected to the underlying country of their nationality. It's an interesting phenomenon to be watching; it's something that I have only seen sort of crop up really in the last five years. We saw it starting; I remember actually talking to an Immigration Officer roundabout 2018-19, we have our contacts, sort of friends and things at Immigration, this wasn't even pertaining to anything we were doing down there. We were just sort of talking to this person off hand after something we had done down at Immigration was done, and they said, we are seeing a big influx of folks with passports that don't look like what we as Thai Immigration traditionally think of as people holding those types of passports. Now, again, not to get into a whole back and forth about sort of the nature of immigration and things like that in different countries, the fundamental fact of it is when you see some of these headlines these days involving foreigners behaving badly if you will, involving foreign passports, you have to kind of look in a little bit deeper and see exactly what's going on.

That being said, as I have discussed in other videos, I think further police activity especially as it pertains to foreign nationals and inappropriate behaviour in Thailand is probably going to increase, as we go through this summer as we even get into the end of this year especially in light of the recent reporting of a foreign national who allegedly, albeit it looks like it is getting harder and harder to even use the word "allegedly" because there seems to be a lot of admission going on, but that said adjudication remains to be concluded, so allegedly is probably the correct word to continue using; but again a foreign national allegedly killing a 17-year-old Thai woman. I expect again this is going to cause some level of passion within the ranks of both regular Police Departments as well as Immigration Police and probably lead to increasingly heightened scrutiny of foreign nationals, what they are doing in Thailand, and I suspect we will probably see further roundups of foreign criminals here in the Kingdom of Thailand.