Witness to Aust murder flees Thailand

A key witness to the Thai murder of Australian bike gang leader Wayne Rodney Schneider has reportedly left for Dubai after police questioning.

A key witness to the kidnapping and murder of a former Australian Hells Angels member in eastern Thailand has reportedly left the country for Dubai.

Amad Jay Malkoun, a former bike gang leader and associate of murdered Australian Wayne Rodney Schneider, was questioned by Royal Thai Police following the abduction last week, but was later released.

Police sources on Saturday told AAP Malkoun had been allowed to depart, and there was no requirement for him to return for further questioning.

Malkoun was sharing a $5200-a-month villa with Schneider, and has previously told Thai media he slept through the November 30 kidnapping of the Australian, whose naked body was recovered from a shallow, sandy grave southeast of Bangkok.

Malkoun, a former head of Australia's outlaw Comanchero biker gang and a convicted large-scale heroin trafficker, left Melbourne in 2013 to settle in Dubai.

Media reports said Schneider's wife was already living in Dubai.

Malkoun is said to have been linked to Melbourne real estate deals worth $13 million, involving a Russian woman, and had also developed strong connections into Russia through his time in Dubai.

News of Malkoun leaving Thailand came as a 21-year old American, Tyler Gerard, earlier arrested at an immigration detention centre on the border with Cambodia, on Friday was taken back to Schneider's villa at the Thai town of Pattaya by Thai Police to re-enact the kidnapping.

On Friday, Cambodian police also arrested another fugitive, 27-year-old Antonio Bagnato, from NSW, in the capital Phnom Penh.

Bagnato, a former business associate of Schneider in Australia, will now face a Phnom Penh court pending his extradition to Thailand.

Investigators told AAP the Royal Thai Police is seeking to further identify and locate the remaining suspects linked to Schneider's killing.


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Source: AAP



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