Riddle of Scot’s Thai f light af ter expat friend is found murdered
A SCOTS teacher is on the run after the body of a fellow expat was found following a night’s partying together in Burma.
Harris Binotti, 25, fled the country after an alleged fight at his home with English teacher Gary Ferguson.
Neighbours heard two men and a woman arguing in the apartment in the capital Rangoon, which Binotti shared with his girlfriend, Elsie Devolder.
But father-of-one Mr Ferguson’s body, which had suffered a ‘hard blow to his chest and his head’, was not discovered until the following day. The 47-year-old’s wife went to the flat when he failed to answer his mobile phone.
Teacher Miss Devolder, who is not under investigation, refused to comment as she left the city centre property yesterday when asked why she had taken so long to report the body.
Binotti took a Thai Airways flight on November 5 and his whereabouts remain unknown, police said.
Burmese police said that he is wanted in connection with Mr Ferguson’s death and Interpol has been alerted.
The men, who worked at Horizon International School, had been out drinking and partying at the smart Uptown hotel on Friday night before returning to Binotti’s flat.
Neighbours at three-storey building heard a fight in the early hours of Saturday and the sound of someone ‘smashing the walls, smashing the floors’.
Binotti was seen trying to push another man out of the flat as he cried, ‘I just need police’, an elderly neighbour told the Guardian newspaper.
‘I heard their cries, saying, “Go, go” but I can’t understand the rest, as it was in English,’ said Myint Myint, who lives on the ground floor.
‘I heard them throwing things. I think it happened around 4.00am (on Saturday). Then they became silent.’
Another resident, who did not want to be named, added: ‘The neighbours could hear them fight… but they were not sure what to do as they did not know them.’
They said Binotti and Miss Devolder had rented the apartment for several months and worked long hours.
Nobody has been arrested in connection with the attack.
Myanmar’s Ministry of Information said Binotti had left the country but gave no further details on his whereabouts.
It issued a statement, saying: ‘The defendant of the case left from Rangoon International Airport by Thai Airways on the evening on November 5.’
Police in Thailand declined to comment on the possibility that he may have entered the country
‘I heard them throwing things’
or used it as a transit point to travel elsewhere.
Captain Koe Myo, from Burma police, said: ‘Now it becomes a cross-border case and it is formally up to Interpol to deal with the process.’
Police have taken statements from Mr Ferguson’s wife, a Thai woman with whom he has a young child, and Miss Devolder.
Horizon International’s director of studies, Shahriyor Turgunov, said the school had heard
‘He was always helping the poor’
the news of Mr Ferguson’s death.
But ‘we have absolutely no idea why this happened’, he added in an email to AFP news agency. ‘We haven’t heard from Harris.’
Binotti lived in Aberdeen and worked at a hotel in Dumfries before moving to Asia.
Belfast-born Mr Ferguson studied in Holland and later taught in Thailand before moving to Burma. His half-brother James Ferguson, 34, of Leiston, in Suffolk, said that he was ‘in shock’ at what had happened.
‘I know he travelled the world a lot,’ he said.
‘He went to Africa and places, trying to help people. All he has ever done is try and help people.
‘I didn’t know he was in Burma. It is just terrible. I don’t know what to think.
‘As far as I know, he was a really good bloke.
‘I can’t understand why anyone would do that to him. He was always helping the poor and stuff.’
Violent crimes against foreigners are rare in Burma, whose expatriate population remains small when compared with those in other south-east Asian countries – though it is growing rapidly.
The British Foreign and Commonwealth Office in Rangoon is offering ‘support to the family of a British national following a death’, a spokesman said, adding the embassy is ‘in touch with the local authorities’.