In recent weeks Thailand's media has attentively reported on the arrest of some paramilitary police who are alleged to have abducted and framed tens, perhaps hundreds, of people.

The Border Patrol Police officers set up most of their victims on charges under which the accused could not get bail. Some they released after receiving ransom. One of these, a middle-aged woman, in January set off the alarm after she, her son and two others had been freed. Since then, over 60 more have complained to the Rights and Liberties Protection Department. At least 180 inmates have reportedly sought for their files to be reopened.

Victims have described how they were held in groups and tortured. According to one, she and her partner were taken to a bungalow where they saw at least twenty more people tied up, some hooded; a few with smashed teeth and bruised faces. Another has claimed that she was electrocuted while pregnant, despite pleading for her baby. She gave birth in remand, awaiting a trial in which she was acquitted of any crime.

A few years ago, a case like this would have been accompanied by loud calls for it to be moved outside of the police force and into the hands of the Department of Special Investigation. But such calls have been noticeably absent this time around, and so far it has been left to the metropolitan branch to make inquiries.

The DSI was established in 2004 under the Justice Ministry. It is one among a number of new bodies introduced through the criminal justice reform agenda of the abrogated 1997 Constitution, which were intended in part to break the police monopoly on criminal investigation in Thailand.

Human rights advocates welcomed the agency. They saw in it the possibility of genuine inquiries into extrajudicial killings, forced disappearances and torture.

But the department soon disappointed. Many cases that should have been classified as "special" were overlooked or rejected. Detailed allegations of kidnapping and extortion by police in Saraburi were apparently not special enough. Nor was the alleged brutal torture of a group of young men in Ayutthaya, or the simultaneous "suicide" of three men in a Lamphun holding cell.

Perhaps in hindsight it was just as well. The victims and families of cases taken up by the DSI have nothing to show for it but bitter experiences and dashed hopes.

Among the department's long list of unsolved cases is the police abduction and presumed killing of human rights lawyer Somchai Neelaphaijit in 2004; the torture of Ekkawat Srimanta, who later withdrew his complaint; the murder of environmentalists Charoen Wat-aksorn and Phra Supoj Suwajo; alleged kidnappings and homicides by police in the northern province of Kalasin, and the disappearance of five people, including a child, from the south.

The department's failures cannot be attributed to a lack of resources or power. It is relatively well equipped and certainly has ample authority. It trumpets its abilities to hunt down pyramid scheme fraudsters, dubious amulet makers and corrupt fire truck procurers. So why can't it catch police kidnappers and killers, or even those who cover up the crimes of kidnappers and killers?

The answer to that question can be found in the department's short history, and in its makeup. Although under a government ministry, it was from the start headed by a policeman. He was for much of the time under a justice minister who had been a policeman, and who was in turn under a prime minister who again had been a policeman.

From the beginning, policemen oversaw, managed and staffed the DSI. For all practical purposes, it became another branch of the police, with the same unofficial policy of not solving human rights cases.

By 2006 human rights defenders had had enough. A petition was launched calling for the dismissal of the department's head, Pol. Gen. Sombat Amornvivat. Some asked that he be criminally investigated for obstructing justice in the Somchai case, which had floundered since he had taken the unusual step of handling it personally some twelve months earlier.

At the end of that year, the new military junta removed Sombat and installed a respected judge as DSI chief. The change was welcomed in some quarters, but it proved to be a false dawn. No further progress has been made on any human rights case under his watch. The ministry has found it hard to break the police stranglehold on the department.

There is little hope that it will be broken anytime soon. Sombat has been brought back into the police force as a deputy commissioner general. His older brother has just become justice minister; so much for Somchai.

People around Thailand will continue to read the unfolding Border Patrol Police story with interest, but perhaps little surprise. Whether or not it comes to anything other than headlines remains to be seen. There are, after all, very few precedents of effective criminal action against violators of human rights in Thailand. Unfortunately, there are none at all from among the cases handled by the Department of Special Investigation, which is why there are also no longer any calls for it to intervene where and when it is needed most.

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    (Awzar Thi is the pen name of a member of the Asian Human Rights Commission with over 15 years of experience as an advocate of human rights and the rule of law in Thailand and Burma whose Rule of Lords blog can be read at: http://ratchasima.net/)