Sept 6, 2011
Source: Monsters and Critics
Bangkok - A Thai provincial court on Tuesday sentenced a Cambodian, Thai and Vietnamese to two years in jail each on charges of spying along the Thai-Cambodian border.
The three men were arrested on June 7, in Si Sa Ket province, 450 kilometres north-east of Bangkok, when they were driving a pickup truck in Thai military-controlled areas along the border near the Preah Vihear temple.
The 11th-century temple has been the source of a decades-old territorial dispute which has erupted into several border clashes between Thai and Cambodian troops over the past three years.
'The accused have pleaded not guilty, but the documents and evidence that were found in their possession leads the court to conclude that they were engaged in spying, and sentences them to two years in jail each,' the Kantharalak Court ruled, according to Thai television reports.
The accused were identified as Thai national Suchart Muhammad, 32, Cambodian Ung Kimtai, 43, and Vietnamese Nguyen Teng-yang, 37.
Thai and Cambodian troops have engaged in occasional skirmishes since mid-2008 over conflicting claims to a 4.6-square-kilometre plot of land adjacent to the temple perched on a cliff that defines the border.
Fighting last flared up in March near two other temples 140 kilometres west of Preah Vihear, leaving eight soldiers dead on each side.
Although the two countries have overlapping claims to land near Preah Vihear, the temple itself was judged to belong to Cambodia by the International Court of Justice in 1962.
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