22 January 2016•Update: 22 January 2016
By Max Constant
BANGKOK
Thai authorities have admitted that they are attempting to verify an intelligence report that claims that members of Daesh traveled to the country's insurgency-plagued south last year to make donations to religious leaders, and ask them to spread Daesh teachings.+-
Junta chief-cum-prime minister Gen. Prayuth Chan-ocha told reporters that three Muslim men suspected of being linked to the militant group arrived in the Muslim south in December.
“We have to watch for things that have an impact on other countries or the world community,” Chan-ocha said.
“Sometimes, talking about some issues will not yield benefit, it will help perpetrators to escape. Some things have to be kept secret.”
Quoting unnamed intelligence sources, the Bangkok Post reported Friday that the three suspects were an Indonesian, a Malaysian and a Singaporean who met Thai religious leaders at a mosque in Narathiwat province, one of the three southernmost provinces, where they made the donations.
According to Indonesian police data, around 1,085 Indonesians have been listed as supporters and sympathizers of Daesh, while at least 408 others have been identified as joining the group in the Middle East.
Malaysia, meanwhile, has identified some 72 Malaysians, including 14 women, as also having joined similar Daesh movements.
On Friday, Thailand's independent Isara news agency reported Wichuda Awae, a local administrator in the Sungai Kolok district of Narathiwat, as saying that Indonesians and Malaysians regularly visited local mosques or gave scholarships to Islamic boarding schools in the area, but added that she had no idea if any of these visitors had links to Daesh.
Isara reported religious leaders and schools as agreeing to receive the donations because “they were given without any strings attached”.
Thai authorities remain adamant that there are no Daesh elements in the provinces of Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat, where local Muslim rebel groups have been waging an insurgency against the central State.
The groups' struggle to “liberate” the region from Thai authorities has been going on for decades, but after a quiet period it re-emerged in 2004. Around 6,500 people have died and 11,000 others have been injured in the conflict, making it one of the deadliest low intensity conflicts on the planet.
In the aftermath of the Jan. 24 attack on Indonesia's capital Jakarta -- in which eight people died -- Thailand's Deputy-Prime Minister Gen. Prawit Wongsuwan told local media that intelligence services had not detected any Daesh activity in Thailand.
Daesh has claimed responsibility for the Jakarta attack, saying it was carried out by “soldiers of the Caliphate”.
