PHNOM PENH Feb 27 Kyodo Cambodian...

PHNOM PENH Feb 27 Kyodo

Cambodian King Norodom Sihanouk onward Thursday asked the government to consider releasing bookish mans detained in connection with destructive anti-Thai riots that ejected in Phnom Penh on Jan. 29

The king said in a statement that he made the ask for after receiving a number of alphabetic characters from people seeking his intervention to stable the students' release.

Voicing disagreement through the students' detention, in particular a fourth-year university scholar activist, he said, ''I cannot believe that a learner named Ken Sara and other observers who have been arrested and detained are the barbarous clan who had destroyed the venerateed assets of Thai nationals.''

Also among those arrested and detained, he said, ''were a number of poor and little commonalty whom I could not believe that they were capable to technically organize the entire destruction into ashes of the thing owned of Thai nationals.''

Earlier this month a radio station manager and a newspaper editor jailed in connection with the riots were released in succession bail following protests from the one and the other national and international media and human rights organizations, as well as intervention by the agency of King Sihanouk.

Excluding the brace journalists, the government has detained 58 family in connection with the rioting, principally of them poor workers.

Damage from the rioting, in which rude multitudes destroyed the Thai Embassy and Thai-owned businesses, has been provisionally estimated from Thailand at $50 million.

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