National police chief Chakthip Chaijinda, who headed a police team to bring back fugitive former monk Phra Phrom Methee to Thailand to face questioning over his involvement in the temple fund embezzlement scandal Wednesday, returned from Germany empty-handed.
Pol Gen Chakthip, accompanied by Pol Col Kritsana Pattanacharoen, the Royal Thai Police deputy spokesman, arrived at Suvarnabhumi airport about noon Wednesday, a police source said.
However, they did not bring back Phra Phrom Methee, the former assistant abbot of Wat Samphanthawong, the source said.
Both police officers had been on the TG923 flight from Frankfurt to Suvarnabhumi airport.
The source said the former abbot, whose lay name is Chamnon Iamintra, had submitted an asylum application on June 2, shortly after he disembarked in Frankfurt.
The source said shortly after the asylum application was accepted, Berlin will spend about two months considering whether to grant him asylum to remain in Germany.
He said Pol Gen Chakthip had assigned Immigration Bureau chief Suthipong Wongpin and police officers under his team to stay in Germany for a few days to closely monitor whether Berlin will allow Thai police to bring back the former assistant abbot of Wat Samphanthawong to stand trial in Thailand.
Defence Minister Prawit Wongsuwon, who is also the deputy prime minister who oversees the police force, said he had told German authorities the former monk's case did not involve politics, so there were no grounds for him to be granted asylum status.
Meanwhile, the Immigration Bureau Wednesday set up a panel to launch a probe into two immigration police officers who were accused of helping the former monk escape arrest from Nakhon Phanom via the Mekong River to Laos. One is a police inspector and the other is a non-commissioned police officer, the source said.
Police were also compiling evidence against five accomplices of former monk Phra Phrom Methee who were suspected of helping him flee. They are three Thais and two Lao nationals.
The former senior monk fled his temple in Bangkok in a van to Phitsanulok and then to Renu Nakhon in Nakhon Phanom. He crossed the Mekong River to Laos and Thakhek town in Khammouane province, then travelled via Phnom Penh to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, where he took a Qatar Airways flight to Frankfurt.
On May 24, police from the Crime Suppression Division (CSD) raided Wat Samphanthawong, Wat Sa Ket and Wat Sam Phraya in Bangkok, looking to arrest seven senior monks on suspicion of them being involved in the funding scandal, including then Phra Phrom Methee.
Five were arrested at the scene while former Wat Sa Ket abbot Phra Phrom Sitthi later turned himself into CSD police.
