KUALA LUMPUR, July 5 — Thai police have arrested a former bomb squad officer who gunned down a Malaysian businessman in Songkhla last year, Bangkok Post reported today.

The suspect, Ekkapol Inkaew, 42, was caught in Surat Thani’s Phunphin district this morning after a Crime Suppression Division (CSD) team surrounded a house in tambon (sub-district) Tha Kham in Phunphin district.

He was apprehended while leaving the house. Police also seized a 9mm pistol and 25 bullets, the paper quoted Pol Col Sompong Suwannawong, chief of the CSD’s sub-division 6 who led the operation, as saying.

Ekkapol is among the six people involved in the fatal shooting of Malaysian businessman Lee Ah Wan in Songkhla’s Hat Yai district on December 4 last year. A Thai woman, Mayaree Thipmanee, believed to be his wife, was also injured.

Lee, 44, was driving a black Mercedes-Benz sedan with Mayuree, 42, on their way to Hat Yai airport in Songkhla when a group of men in a Toyota sprayed the car with bullets, killing the Malaysian.

Bangkok Post reported that Ekkapol confessed that he had been paid 700,000 baht (RM68,000) to kill the Malaysian man, although he claimed he was not aware the victim was a wealthy businessman.

He had used an M16 rifle to attack the victim’s sedan.

Ekkapol has been charged with colluding in the murder and attempted murder, as well as illegal possession of firearms.

The paper said the police had earlier identified Nongyao Chaminual as the mastermind of the shooting.

Nongyao claimed Lee had recorded a video clip of him having sex with her younger sister.

Lee was then said to have used it to blackmail her into transferring the ownership of a 20-million-baht (RM1.7 million) land plot to him.

But Bangkok Post quoted Pol Col Sompong as saying that the police were not convinced.