The suspect, identified only as ‘Mr Adonis’, was a key member of an international criminal gang and had fled to Phuket to evade an international arrest warrant, police reported.
Officers launched an investigation after coordination with the French Embassy, uncovering that Adonis had participated in the kidnapping of a prisoner and the killing of a prison officer during a prison break.
Adonis had fled to Phuket, where he remained in hiding.
Phuket Immigration and the Immigration Bureau’s Crime Suppression Division tracked him down and took him into custody, police said in their brief report.
The location, time and date of Adonis’s arrest was not reported.
A photo presented with the report of his arrest showed Adonis, after processing, already at Phuket International Airport.
Police have not directly linked the arrest of ‘Adonis’ with the violent prison van ambush in May last year that freed French gangster Mohamed Amra.
Amra was arrested in Romania in February. His escape sparked a nationwide manhunt and political outcry over drug crime, reports France 24.
French police have been trying to understand the link between Amra and a suspected criminal gang called the ‘Black Manjak Family’, France 24 noted.