Ari Michael Salinger feared for his life during ‘nightmare’ stay in a Thai detention centre

Inside the Thai Immigration Detention Centre where Ari Michael Salinger says he was forced to sleep on the floor with minimal clothes, often with no food.

When Ari Michael Salinger left his hotel in Patong for a stroll around the town, he never thought he would end up living his worst nightmare.

Salinger, who returned home to Auckland this week, told the Herald he was finally able to breathe.

After a gruesome seven months of surviving what he described as never-ending hell in Thai detention, the 45-year-old is now trying to rebuild his life.

Ari Michael Salinger, 45, is finally able to breathe after returning to Auckland from a gruesome months-long stay in a Thailand detention centre. Photo / Alex Burton

He feared he would die in detention - and claims he endured cramped conditions, rotten food and an agonising wait to get back to New Zealand.

“I thought I [would be] killed,” he said of his time locked up.

‘Made me walk half naked with my pants down’

Salinger moved to Thailand from the Philippines in 2019 as it was deemed a better country for his cryptocurrency business.

“The business was great when I came here, I made a lot of money and then Covid hit. I was unable to go back to the Philippines to my partner Vanessa and our son.”

After the business went downhill, Salinger was arrested in late September 2022 by Patong Police on drug possession offences.

He was found carrying two ecstasy pills, which he now claims weren’t his despite his earlier guilty plea to the possession charges.

Ari Michael Salinger and his partner Vanessa Pagarigan in Phuket.

Salinger claimed when was arrested and taken to Patong Police Station for questioning he was humiliated by officers.

“In the interview room, they tightened my handcuffs and refused to even let me use the toilet.

“I have irritable bowel syndrome and they did not care. I told them otherwise I’ll have to relieve myself here if they won’t let me.

“So, six officers took me to the toilet.

“I requested to have my handcuffs loosened so I could pull my pants up but they won’t let me, I asked for one of them to help me pull them up but they did not offer any help.

“They made me walk half naked with my pants down all the way through the public corridors, they pushed me, made me fall over, they were all laughing and taking a video recording. It was very humiliating.”

Salinger said he was unable to access a lawyer or the New Zealand Embassy and had to spend the night locked up – then felt extorted by the counsel eventually provided to him.

Salinger said each court date the police would pressure him to plead guilty.

“Three times I plead not guilty. Then one court date, they said we have a great deal for you, if you plead guilty everything will be fine.

“The lawyers told me if I plead guilty I would get no sentence and if I plead not guilty and it was proven otherwise I would get two years in prison, so I decided to plead guilty so I could leave Thailand for good.”

Salinger believed he would get time to sort out his possessions in Thailand – and send them to his wife and children in the Philippines before being deported.

“At that time I did not know there were life-threatening situations in the IDC [Immigration Detention Centre],” he said.

‘A nightmare’

Salinger was scheduled to go to the Phuket IDC on May 8 after he paid a fine. However, he said endured another week at Patong Police Station.

“It was like a nightmare going back there. They took all the clothes off me. It was like out of a horror movie.”

Salinger said he saw a woman prisoner being treated like vermin in the cell opposite him.

“I think she was making a lot of noise so they handcuffed her next to the toilet. There were five others in that cell.”

Ari Michael Salinger, 45, says he was forced to sleep on floor with minimal clothes often with no food in a Thai Immigration Detention Centre.

Salinger said he had no food or clothes, he was hungry and handed some money to the police guard in hopes he would get him something to eat.

“But he did not give me food, he just put the money in his pocket.”

Salinger said he thought the officers would do to him what they did to the woman in the opposite cell so he kept quiet.

“An Australian guy [died] just two weeks before I was put there at Patong police station.”

He spent four nights and five days in the prison cell before being transferred to Phuket IDC.

Once there, Salinger was able to use the phone but had to pay a price, he said.

“My partner Vanessa had come to Thailand by that time and she would pay the guards to bring me food.

Then Salinger was transferred to a Bangkok detention centre, he said.

“I was taken with 28 people in a police van, we were all chained and handcuffed to one another. It was a 13-hour trip.

“It was very hot and if we had to use the toilet, we were given a small plastic bottle.”

The Thai Immigration Detention Centre was hot and Ari Michael Salinger had to pay guards for food.

‘Every other day we would get sick’

The Bangkok centre was a large basketball court, Salinger said, crammed with 400-500 people and the food was at times rotten.

“There were barbed wires around the fences. The only good thing about it was we could walk a little.

“But every other day we would get sick.”

Losing hope

Salinger said he was under the impression that he has to pass a medical check and a risk assessment before an airline would accept him to fly because of his criminal conviction and his ADHD condition.

He said he had asked multiple times to get a doctor in IDC but only when news of his detention broke was he provided with a nurse, which again delayed the process.

“ADHD affects work and study, not being a passenger on a flight,” he said.

In an email to the embassy, and at his wits’ end, Salinger wrote “please just stop delaying and book the flight!!”

Salinger’s father, climate scientist Jim Salinger, had earlier told the media his son was not a risk and his mental health should not be an issue.

“He’s perfectly fine and he’s a non-violent person,” said Jim, who paid for the flights via the embassy.

Salinger was moved between more detention centres, in the last one he had a month-long stay.

“The embassy kept on telling me my flights were confirmed. But at that stage, I had lost hope, I thought I’d be stuck here like many others for years.

“I was sleeping on the floor, with minimal clothes, less food, watching all other foreigners leave except me, I was losing confidence in the embassy.

The day he got the final confirmation that he was flying out, just last week, Salinger said, he did not sleep the whole night.

“I did not want to miss my chance, because I know if I overslept the guards would not care, I absolutely did not want to miss my flight.”

Ari Michael Salinger returns to Auckland and enjoys a haircut and shave having been released from a detention centre in Thailand. Photo / Alex Burton

When he landed in Aotearoa New Zealand, Salinger said it was like he had control of his life again.

“Last night I had a good sleep.

“But it is still a long journey, the prices have gone up here and I have to rebuild my life.”

Salinger is trying to raise money to bring his pregnant wife and family to New Zealand from the Philippines so they can begin a new life in this country.

Akula Sharma is an Auckland-based reporter who joined the Herald in 2022. She has previously worked at the Gisborne Herald.