Interpol asked to help track duo who left the country after savage assault on Cambodian artist

Police have asked Interpol to help arrest two Polish men alleged to have cut a Cambodian woman’s face, hit her with a hammer and splashed acid on her genitals last month in Pattaya.

Investigators have already identified the pair, aged 22 and 31, from fingerprints and DNA on a cutter, a hammer, adhesive tape, a wire and a glass left at the crime scene, Pol Col Nawin Sinthurat, chief of the Bang Lamung police station, said on Friday.

As well, he said, authorities have surveillance camera video and circumstantial testimony from witnesses.

The crime took place in a forest near an eatery on Na Kluea 16 Road in tambon Nong Prue of Bang Lamung district on Nov 1.

Pol Col Nawin said the victim was a 30-year old Cambodian woman who was a freelance artist and worked with a charity in Cambodia. She had lived in Pattaya for about a year.

When police questioned the woman in hospital after the assault, she told them she did not know the attackers. But she said her life had been threatened earlier by an ex-wife of her foreign boyfriend, the station chief said.

According to the officer, before the attack, the Cambodian woman received a contact through the WhatsApp chat app from a person who claimed to be a prospective female art buyer who wanted to see her paintings at the eatery.

But at the appointed time, the two Polish men turned up instead. They dragged the woman to a nearby forest behind a deserted house.

There they tied her hands and feet with a wire and adhesive tape, threw acid on her body including her genitals, cut her face and hit her with a hammer before fleeing.

The two men had arrived in the country on Oct 20 and stayed at a hotel in South Pattaya, police said. They rode a motorcycle to the crime scene on Oct 31 and left it at a coffee shop nearby on the following day, after the assault.

Pol Col Nawin said the suspects left for the Philippines on Nov 3. Apparently the assault was planned and initially police suspected a relationship conflict, he added.

Source:
courtesy of BANGKOK POST

by CHAIYOT PUPATTANAPONG

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