Former Wat Samphanthawong assistant abbot Phra Phrom Methee has been arrested in Germany after more than a week on the run following a crackdown on temple fund embezzlement, police said.
The police sources said the monk was detained by German immigration authorities at Frankfurt airport after an alert from Thai police that he was under an arrest warrant.
Phra Phrom Methee fled the temple in Bangkok before police raids at Wat Samphanthawong, Wat Sa ket and Wat Samphraya on May 24 to detain senior monks charged with fund embezzlement.
He and his disciples fled from Bangkok to Phitsanulok and Nakhon Phanom before crossing the Mekong River to Thakhek town in Khammouane province in Laos. They then travelled to Cambodia and took a Qatar Airlines flight from Phnom Penh to Frankfurt via Qatar, the sources said.
National police chief Pol Gen Chakthip Chaijinda and several other senior police officers left for Frankfurt on Sunday to escort the fugitive monk back to face the charges in Thailand, the sources added. They will return to Bangkok on Wednesday morning on Thai Airways International flight TG921 from Frankfurt.
Thailand and Germany have not signed an extradition agreement but the two countries have a treaty on mutual assistance in criminal matters, a legal mechanism that facilitated the arrest of the senior monk and Thai attempts to take him back.
A female disciple identified only as "Joom" admitted meeting him in Laos during interrogation after she was caught at the immigration checkpoint at the Thai-Lao Friendship Bridge in Nakhon Phanom.
Six other monks from the three temples - including Phra Phrom Sitthi, the former abbot of Wat Se Ket -who faced fund embezzlement charges have been defrocked and detained at the Bangkok Special Remand Prison.
