British backpacker describes terror after 'Thai mafia' death threat
Sean McAnna, who knew the murdered British backpacker David Miller, says he was forced to flee the Thai island of Koh Tao after being threatened by local gangsters
By Telegraph Video, video produced by Tom Phillips and Geraldine Cooper
1:11PM BST 22 Sep 2014
Sean McAnna, 25, who is from Shotts near Glasgow, says he was approached by a group ofThaimen in a bar on Sairee beach in the early hours of Monday morning.
"Three of them sat me down and started asking me questions, and I was a bit drunk so I was answering them," he told the Telegraph.
According to Mr McAnna, the conversation then took a sinister turn, as the men accused him of murdering fellow British tourists David Miller and Hannah Witheridge, telling him, "you're going to hang yourself tonight - we're going to watch you hang".
He said that he believed the men wanted to use him as a "scapegoat" for the murders.
Mr McAnna ran away and took refuge in a nearby supermarket, which he was only able to leave once police arrived.
Two Thai men were questioned about the incident but they were not arrested. The police chief said he would guarantee the Briton's security while he remained on Koh Tao.
"I need to get off this island," he said in an emotional interview before boarding a ferry to leave Koh Tao.
"I genuinely thought that was the day I was going to die. I genuinely thought that this was me dead. That I was gone."
"I phoned my mum, I phoned my sister. I told her I loved her and that I would try and make it home. I said that if this was going to be the last conversation that we had then it was a really sad one to have but she's been great and I love her."
1836 – 1846 * During this period the first English-language newspaper was launched under British-ruled Tenasserim, southern Burma . The first ethnic Karen-language and Burmese-language newspapers also appear in this period. March 3, 1836 —The first English-language newspaper, The Maulmain Chronicle , appears in the city of Moulmein in British-ruled Tenasserim. The paper, first published by a British official named E.A. Blundell, continued up until the 1950s. September 1842 —Tavoy’s Hsa-tu-gaw (the Morning Star ), a monthly publication in the Karen-language of Sgaw , is established by the Baptist mission. It is the first ethnic language newspaper. Circulation reached about three hundred until its publication ceased in 1849. January 1843 —The Baptist mission publishes a monthly newspaper, the Christian Dhamma Thadinsa (the Religious Herald ), in Moulmein. Supposedly the first Burmese-language newspaper, it continued up until the first year of the second Angl
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