Among the plaintiffs gathered at Kraisak's home were the relatives of Trakul Yito, a former Tambon Ban Soi Dao administration organisation official in Pak Chong district, who was gunned down on his dairy farm on August 1, 2003.

The relatives said the murder was certainly carried out by government officials because Trakul had a land dispute with a senior civil servant and had filed a lawsuit against the official for corruption.

Trakul's name later appeared on a blacklist as a Pak Chong drug dealer. He was also accused of being a cattle thief.

Another case concerned 17-year-old schoolboy Chaowat Suwantha, who was shot in the head by a group of gunmen in a pickup truck in Huai Thalaeng district on March 12, 2003.

Chaowat's father Weerasak Suwantha said the boy had previously reported to police due to his previous arrest for taking yaba and was about to join a drug rehabilitation programme on March 13.

Weerasak added that a friend of Chaowat who had a similar drug-abuse history and was about to join the same rehab programme was also gunned down while helping his father fix a motorbike.

Kraisak said government officials caused as many as 2,500 deaths during the 2003 war on drugs but relatives of the victims had kept quiet for fear they too would be killed.

He urged Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont to restore the people's faith and to ask the Justice Ministry to accept information about these murders and the Special Investigation Department to re-investigate the cases.

Kraisak added he would invite the Justice Ministry and the National Human Rights Commission to listen to victims' relatives who believed the deaths were caused by government officials.  Kraisak also said the war-on-drugs policy by ousted prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra was followed by 2,500 deaths and 7,000 injuries. This practice was later extended to the three southernmost provinces.

Kraisak also called for Thaksin to be punished in the same manner as Saddam Hussein of Iraq.

He said there was sufficient evidence in documents issued by the Interior Ministry to allow government officials to arrest and carry out extrajudicial killings on drug-dealing suspects. There were also letters from district chiefs to the people under suspicion to report to the police or their personal security could not be guaranteed, he added.

However, Kraisak admitted only relatives of 40 cases of the accumulated 1,400 cases of the silent killings had dared to speak up.

"In all these cases, there's no evidence the victims were involved in the drug trade. For this reason, the Justice Ministry could bring this case to the international court against Thaksin, who ordered the killings," he said. In a related case, relatives of a Mathayom 2 student from Chakkarat district complained that while he was fighting with another student group this August, two men in a pickup truck - policemen who were trying to stop the fight - shot at the students.

One bullet hit and seriously injured the boy. When the relatives went to file a complaint at the Chakkarat police station, a police officer asked if the boy was dead yet.

The investigation into the shooting has made no progress.