Thailand authorities did not press new charges against arrested Kazakhstan pilots

Astana. January 11. Kazakhstan Today - The authorities of Thailand did not press new charges against the crew of the plane IL-76, the arrested people on December 12. The official representative of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Kazakhstan, Askar Abdrahmanov, informed the agency.

"According to our information, there are no new charges against our pilots," Askar Abdrahmanov said.

As informed earlier, the newspaper Bangkok Post published that the new charges have been pressed against the crew of IL-76. In particular, they have been accused of illegal transportation of weapons, their illegal import in the country, and concealment of the fact of their presence onboard.

As informed earlier, the plane Il-76 of the Georgian airline Air West Georgia was detained at the airport Don Myang in Bangkok on December 12, 2009, where it landed to re-fuel on the way from Pyongyang. The arms forbidden to export from the Democratic People's Republic of Korea by the decision of the UN Security Council were revealed onboard of the plane: rocket-propelled grenades, surface-to-air missile launchers, and other weapons. The crew members - the citizen of Belarus and four citizens of Kazakhstan have been detained and accused of illegal storage of weapons and its transportation through the Kingdom of Thailand territory.

According to the official representative of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Kazakhstan, Yerzhan Ashikbayev, Kazakhstan insists on innocence of the arrested Kazakhstan pilots in Thailand.

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