BANGKOK

Two Myanmar migrant workers accused of murdering two British tourists on Koh Tao island in southern Thailand have strongly denied the charges during the first day of their trial Friday.

Andy Hall, a researcher of migrant workers’ rights present at the hearing, told The Anadolu Agency that when asked who the killers could be, if not them, the two suspects “replied strongly that they don’t know anything [about the murder].”

Friday’s hearing at the Koh Samui criminal court was for the prosecution and the defense teams to exchange information and documents regarding witnesses.

British tourists David Miller, 24, and Hannah Witheridge, 23, were found dead with heavy blows to the head Sept. 15 on a beach on Koh Tao island. From the beginning, the police investigation has been mired in controversy as reporters entered the crime scene, potentially altering evidence, and police did not initially call for a forensic expert.

On Oct. 2, Thai police arrested two Myanmar migrant workers, 21-year-olds Win Zaw Htun and Zaw Lin.

Both initially confessed to the crime, but retracted their confessions later that month, saying police had tortured them in jail.

They face charges including rape, murder, illegal entry into Thailand and remaining in the country without permission.

NGOs and Myanmar officials have expressed their strong skepticism about the accusations. Myanmar President Thein Sein told visiting Thai Prime Minister General Prayuth Chan-ocha in October that the probe into the murder must be “fair.”

Earlier this month, a counter-investigation team commissioned by the Myanmar government said it did not believe the two were guilty.

“However the Thai judiciary decides on the case, it is our belief that these two kids did not commit the crime,” a spokesperson for the team, Htoo Chit, said at a press conference in Myanmar’s capital Yangon.

“According to what we know and eyewitness information we have gathered, we believe they are innocent.”

The parents of the two tourists, however, said they were “confident” about the Thai police’s investigation at the beginning of December.

Emotional scenes unfolded Friday as the parents of the two accused attended the hearing and, during recesses, held onto theirs sons.

One of the accusations of the prosecution team -- that the youths were illegal migrant workers -- was partly shot down after Zaw Lin presented his passport, which showed they had the proper authorization to work in Thailand.

“It weakens the prosecution case a little bit, and it severely discredits the investigation work,” Nakhon Chompuchat, the head of the defense legal team, told AA.

The defense lawyers requested the trial be postponed, saying they had not been given enough time to prepare documentation and testimonies.

The court rejected the request, setting July 8 and Aug. 28 next year for the hearing of prosecution witnesses, and Sept. 1 and Sept. 25 for the hearing of defense witnesses.

Since the discovery of the tourists’ bodies, Thailand has been scrambling to find the murderer, with police pointing the finger of suspicion at a missing British tourist who had met the victims, and then the foreign laborers.

Raising suspicions that Thailand may have been looking for a scapegoat is the police's history of framing suspects in order to "show results" in difficult cases.  

In 1986, four Thai men were arrested for the murder of Sherry Ann Duncan, a Thai-American teenager whose body was found by the side of a road after she was abducted on her way home from school. All four were sentenced to death, only to be found innocent five years later. By then, one had died in prison, and two others died a few months after their release.

In 2000, an Australian was shot dead and his partner raped in Northern Thailand. Two members of an ethnic minority hill tribe community were arrested, confessed and sentenced, but five years later they were found innocent and released -- their lawyer saying their confessions had been tortured from them.

In October, Amnesty International called for Thai authorities to initiate an "independent, effective and transparent investigation into the mounting allegations."

www.aa.com.tr/en