Suwat Apaipak, former lawyer for slain businessman Akeyuth Anchanbutr, announced on Wednesday he will no longer be involved in the murder case over fears for his safety.
Mr Suwat said he would not dig into the case anymore, claiming he had received death threats on a daily basis and that Akeyuth's relatives were also concerned about their safety and had told him to stay away from the case. The investigation into the murder by metropolitan police is about to be concluded.
The lawyer claimed he had obtained information from informers that the same group of men who killed Akeyuth planned to take his life by using two trucks loaded with sand to kill him on a road.
"I will no longer be involved in the Akeyuth case," Mr Suwat announced.
Mr Suwat said early this month he was contacted by Santiphap Pengduang, a suspect who was Akeyuth's driver, asking him to visit him at the prison.
He sent a team of lawyers to visit Mr Santiphap. Mr Santiphap told the lawyers that he tried two times to kill Akeyuth but was not successful. A team of killers were subsequently hired for 3 million baht to kill Akeyuth and succeeded. This time his job was only to get rid of the corpse.
According to Mr Suwat, Mr Santiphap told the lawyers he was promised 100,000 baht for the job, but was not paid.
Mr Suwat said it could be concluded that Mr Santiphap was not the killer. The murder was in fact the work of a group of "men in colour", coinciding with the National Human Rights Commission's findings which indicated that Akeyuth was killed by professionals with special skills, he added.