Cold beers in hand and cards on the table, many of the mostly British retirees at the Pattaya bridge club continued playing after a special unit from the Thai interior ministry arrived with a warrant to bust an illegal gambling operation.

Hours later, all 32 players were in custody. One frail, elderly woman in a flowery blouse, leaning on a walking stick, was helped into the police van by a fellow bridge enthusiast as officers with shiny badges around their necks looked on.

“She’s a Dutch lady who is 84,” said Jeremy Watson, the 74-year-old organiser of the club who has spent much of his life in Thailand and settled in Pattaya, home to many European retirees.

Those arrested were mainly British but included at least two Australians as well as Scandinavians and Americans.

There are certainly higher value targets for the Thai police in the resort town — which boomed as a rest and recreation stop for American soldiers during the Vietnam war — famed for sex tourism. Both Russian and Chinese mafia are known to operate there.

But in a country run by a military junta that has promised to heal a society it views as plagued by social ills and poisoned by divisions, Thai police are duty-bound to follow up on tip-offs no matter how bizarre. It makes for a very malleable system.

Watson, who grew up in Hampshire, believes the police strike on the club was orchestrated by a local woman related to a club regular.

“I’m 100 percent convinced of it,” he said by phone from Pattaya.



The woman has regularly stormed up to the club’s entrance to “mouth obscenities at us”, Watson alleged.

The woman went to the police three months ago to complain that the 22-year-old Jomtien and Pattaya bridge club was not registered, Watson said. The police followed up with the club at the time but “were very pleasant and told us all was in order”.

Watson believes the woman then went over the heads of the local police to the anti-corruption department of the office of prime minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, who has promised to tackle graft in the south-east Asian nation.

“She certainly knows how the Thai system works,” he said.

The card players were kept in the police station for nine hours until 2:15am on Thursday morning. One member’s wife brought them snacks from the local mini market.

“I was kept until 5:15am,” said Watson. “Police say they are closing the case. But no one’s passports, driving licences and bail money have been returned,” he said of the 5,000 baht (£95) each detainee paid to get out.

“I don’t blame the police. It’s an over-swing of the pendulum,” said Watson, who moved to Thailand in 1969 to work first for a British trading company and later for the American manufacturer of sewing machines, Singer.

Although the police have closed the case, Watson says that the bridge players will have to wait for at least a week to get their passports back while the public prosecutor looks into the gambling allegations as well as charges of attending an unlicensed club.

Legal accusations are dangerous in Thailand, where citizens can launch police inquiries easily. Defamation, for example, is a criminal offence and cases of lèse-majesté — insults to the monarchy that can be raised by any member of the public — have surged since the arch-royalist generals seized power from the elected government in May 2014.

Maj Gen Werachon Sukhondapatipak, deputy spokesman for the government, told the Guardian the bridge club police operation was “a misunderstanding”.

“We are trying to suppress gambling but locals (in Pattaya) don’t understand the bridge game,” he said, adding that the players should have their passports returned very soon.

Watson, who lives with his wife by the sea, says he is still facing charges under a 1935 law that states no one can possess more than 120 packs of cards at one time.

“There is also a second charge on me for not having paid tax on the playing cards. All cards have to be taxed but you can gift two packs at a time so we’ve being asking people visiting Thailand to bring some each trip for years,” he said.

“I have to go to court in a couple months time, which might be fun.”