REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, GENEVA -- UN human rights chief urged the Thai government Wednesday to do more to determine the fates of 82 people listed as disappeared, including a prominent human rights lawyer missing for 12 years.

"All of the families of those who have disappeared have the right to know the truth regarding the disappearance of their kin, as well as any progress and the results of investigations," Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein said in a statement.

He voiced particular concern about the case of Somchai Neelapaijit, a Muslim lawyer who vanished in 2004 while he was defending suspected Islamic militants who had accused authorities of torturing them while in custody.

Late last month, Thailand's supreme court upheld the 2011 acquittal of five police officers accused of involvement in his abduction and disappearance.

Zeid harshly criticised that decision, accusing the Supreme Court of missing "an opportunity to protect the rights of the victims to truth, justice and redress in cases of involuntary and enforced disappearance."

Somchai disappeared from the streets of Bangkok under the government of Thaksin Shinawatra during a surge in fighting between the army and Islamist militants in Thailand's deep south.

Thaksin, who was eventually deposed in a military coup, was on record as saying the lawyer had been killed by at least four government officials, although his body has never been found.

Five police officers eventually stood trial over the incident after eyewitnesses reported seeing Somchai bundled into a car on the night he vanished.

But since Thailand does not recognise the crime of enforced disappearance, the court only considered charges of robbery and coercion, not for disappearing him or murder, the UN rights office said.

Zeid called on the Thai government to criminalise enforced and voluntary disappearance, in line with international standards.

"There is a lack of adequate legal and institutional framework for the victims and their families to seek justice in enforced disappearance cases in Thailand," he said.

This is of particular concern, the UN rights office statement said, since "the issue of enforced disappearances in which state officials have been implicated remains a serious concern."

Somchai's unsolved case is just one of 82 enforced disappearances recorded in Thailand by a group of UN experts since 1980, it pointed out.

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