Thai officials today reiterated their support for a former Bangkok police chief arrested in Tokyo on a weapons charge as Japanese media reports the gun doesn’t seem legally registered.
An unnamed official in Japan said the loaded .22 Magnum mini-revolver found in the luggage of Kamronwit Thoopkrachang, 50, was not inscribed with any of the Thai registration numbers or letters that it would have under the law.
The American-made pistol did not match any records of the approximately 600 registered in Thailand, according to the Interior Ministry’s Sakchai Tangho, who added that when records were digitized in 2009, some could have hypothetically been lost, according to Bangkok Post. Hypothetically speaking.
Japanese investigators are working on the case, and prosecutors there have until mid-July under Japanese law to file charges.
Ultimately the registration status in Thailand is likely a moot point, as illegal gun possession is a serious crime in Japan, which has some of the world’s strictest gun control laws.
Kamronwit was Bangkok’s metropolitan police commissioner from 2012 through 2013.
Photo: Fuji News Network
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