By Thai Newsroom Reporters
THE OFFICE OF THE ATTORNEY-GENERAL has finally resolved to appeal a lese majeste lawsuit in the Appellate Court against de facto Pheu Thai boss-turned-inmate Thaksin Shinawatra.
Attorney-General Itthiporn Kaeothip has eventually overruled the resolution of an ad hoc committee attached to the OAG earlier made in favour of the former prime minister/current de facto Pheu Thai boss-turned-inmate Thaksin to the extent that the time-consuming lese majeste case be appealed in the Appellate Court after it had been lifted by the Criminal Court over the last few months.
Thaksin had allegedly violated the lese majeste law, better known as Section 112 of the Criminal Code, by accusing His Late Majesty King Bhumibol Adulyadej the Great of involvement in the 2014 coup which had deposed his fugitive sister/former prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra of power during an English-speaking interview with a news agency in Seoul, South Korea, the following year.
The Criminal Court had earlier waived the lawsuit because the then-globetrotting Thaksin was not found to have literally mentioned the late monarch by name though he had evidently used the word “the Palace” and mentioned some anti-government protest leader, army general and privy councillor who had reportedly played their pivotal roles in the coup primarily staged by former army chief-turned-prime minister Prayut Chan-o-cha.
If the Appellate Court followed suit of the Criminal Court by lifting the case, the OAG could possibly proceed over to the Supreme Court for final judgment.
If the Appellate Court found Thaksin guilty of lese majeste charges which carry a maximum of a 15-year jail term, the de facto Pheu Thai boss-turned-inmate would almost certainly fight it in the Supreme Court.
The de facto Pheu Thai boss who is currently serving a curtailed, one-year term at Klong Prem prison and speculated to be released on parole around an early part of the upcoming March returned home in 2023 after he had spent 17 years of self-exile abroad without being subsequently literally put behind bars for a single day.
The unprecedented phenomenon was largely viewed as a sheer flouting of the law on the part of the politically powerful Thaksin, followed by his six-month-long, privileged stay in a premium ward of Police Hospital where he had contentiously feigned himself as a “critically-ill patient.” But the questionable fake-out was officially refuted by the Medical Council of Thailand, thus prompting the Supreme Court to deliver last September’s verdict to return him to prison to serve the one-year term which had been curtailed from an originally-sentenced eight-year term on a few counts of misconduct perpetrated during his previous premiership over the last couple of decades.
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Top and Front Page – De facto Pheu Thai boss-turned-inmate Thaksin Shinawatra. Photos – Amarin TV
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