KOH TAO : -- Thai police now said they have obtained photograph of two Thai
men while sexually harassing the British tourist Hannah Witheridge and
assaulting her friend David Miller while trying to protect her at a
beach bar, another British man who was friend to David recalled the
nightmare on the night of the murder to British newspapers today
of being threatened with life by Thai mafias who tried to force him to
admit to the murder of the two victims.
He fled the Thai island where
two British backpackers were murdered last week after claiming the
“mafia” was trying to hang him, according to the UK-based The Telegraph
newspapers.
The papers said Sean McAnna, 25,
from Shotts near Glasgow, was a friend of David Miller, the tourist
whose body was found last Monday on Koh Tao island along with that of
Hannah Witheridge.
Sean McAnna, 26, from, Shotts,
Lanarkshire, made the allegations on Facebook at 4am after he fled and
took refuge in a 24 hour convenience store on the island and posted a
picture he took of his alleged pursuers.
He also identified whom he believed was one of the killers.
And he asked for Sky Television to
phone him. McAnna was quickly given consular advice and protected by
friends until he caught a ferry off the island later in the day. His
posts were taken down.
Sean McAnna later revealed how he
slept all night in the jungle and then for a while around 7 am this
morning under a snooker table in a bar.
In the early hours of the morning
he had been drinking in a beach bar when he was accused by two Thais of
being the killer he was allegedly the guitarist in a group of people
singing on the beach on the morning of Hannah and David’s murders.
You have blood on your hands, they
said adding that he should be strung up and hanged from a tree. He fled
the bar and took refuge in the convenience story pursed by the two men,
he said. That’s when he took the picture.
“So I just ran. I just left and ran.”
Mr McAnna claimed that two Thai
men, who he believes may have crucial information about the murders,
threatened to kill him in the early hours of Monday morning while he was
drinking at a bar on Sairee beach near to where their disfigured bodies
were discovered.
He fled, took refuge in a nearby
supermarket and was only able to leave when police were called and
arrived on the scene at around 5am. They questioned the two Thai men but
no arrests were made.
He later posted on his Facebook
recalling the nightmare in Koh Tao trying to flee from the Mafia who he
said might have information.
With those two men still at large,
Mr McAnna said he spent the day in hiding before fleeing Koh Tao fearing
he could be killed if he stayed.
“I need to get off this island,” a
tearful and visibly nervous Mr McAnna told The Telegraph during an
interview conducted inside the back of a taxi before he departed.
“I genuinely thought that was the
day I was going to die,” Mr McAnna said. “I genuinely thought that this
was me dead. That I was gone.”
“I phoned my mum, I phoned my sister. I told her I loved her and that I
would try and make it home. I said that if this was going to be the last
conversation that we had then it was a really sad one to have but she’s
been great and I love her.”
Mr McAnna met Mr Miller last year
while both men were living in Leeds. He was the singer and guitarist in a
Leeds band called These Fading Polaroids and Mr Miller was an
engineering student. Both lived in the Hyde Park area.
Sean McAnna was a friend of David Miller.
Mr McAnna said he recently returned
to Koh Tao – where he had previously spent 18 months living and working
as a barman – and had planned but failed to meet Mr Miller on the night
he and Ms Witheridge were murdered.
Locals appear reluctant to discuss
the case, apparently fearing reprisals from mafia-style families who are
said to control Koh Tao.
Mr McAnna said he believed it was
people linked to one such group who threatened to kill him. At around
2.30am he was accosted by two Thai men at Koh Tao’s AC Bar, a beach
front nightclub where Mr Miller and Ms Witheridge had been just before
they were murdered.
“They just said to me: ‘It was you who killed them. You’ve got two
people’s deaths on your hands. We know it was you. You’re going to hang
yourself tonight and we are going to watch you hang. You will die
tonight.’”
“So I just ran. I just left and ran,” he said.
Mr McAnna said he did not know if
the men who threatened him were directly involved in his friend’s
murder. However, he did believe they had key information about the
murders and were attempting to make him a “scapegoat” for the killings.
“I think they needed a scapegoat. I
think they might know who it was. They need a scapegoat and they don’t
want it to be locals. They want it to be a westerner. So if I kill
myself here, if I hang myself here, then it is easy to say: ‘See, it was
him.’”
Mr McAnna posted information about
the alleged threats on his Facebook page at around 4am on Monday and
issued a desperate plea for help. “Thai mafia are trying to kill me.
Please help me,” he wrote.
He said he also spoke to Foreign
Office officials in London over the telephone. After being taken from
the supermarket by Thai police, Mr McAnna said he spent the rest of the
night hiding from the men he feared were going to kill him in the
jungle.
“I was scared s*******. I was really scared. So I kept moving every
thirty minutes in case anybody had seen me. I would move from one part,
to the next part in case there was anyone close that had seen me and
could send someone.”
Mr McAnna rejected the men’s claims that had been involved killing his
friend and Ms Witheridge. “Of course I had nothing to do with it.”
Prachum Ruangthong, the police chief responsible for Koh Tao, confirmed
that Mr McAnna had been asked to provide DNA samples as part of
investigations into the murders but was not considered a suspect.
The police chief denied receiving
reports of death threats against Mr McAnna even though he met him on
Monday morning and told the British traveller: “I am sensitive about
your feelings. You don’t worry, ok?”
Two Thai men were questioned about the incident but they were not
arrested.
The police chief said he would guarantee the Briton’s security
while he remained on Koh Tao.
After spending much of Monday in hiding, Mr McAnna travelled to the
island’s port with a group of British reporters at around 2.30pm.
He left Koh Tao on a passenger ferry at 3.10 pm.
The 25-year-old Scot vowed never to
return to an island that markets itself as a paradise for divers and
partiers. “I’m done here,” he said, adding that he would only feel truly
safe once he had flown out of Thailand. “Something could still happen
to me in the next 24 hours.
