By Thai Newsroom Reporters
THE CRIMINAL COURT today (July 31) denied a request filed by de facto Pheu Thai boss Thaksin Shinawatra as a criminal suspect on bail to leave Thailand for the United Arab Emirates for a couple of weeks next month.
The Criminal Court denied Thaksin’s personal request for a departure from Bangkok to Dubai during Aug. 1 and Aug. 16 with purported intent to undergo medical treatments by doctors in the UAE capital for “illnesses” which he had described as rotator cuff tears, herniated intervertebral disc, a respiratory disorder, a coronary artery disease and a lung disease.
The former globetrotter’s court-denied request also referred to his planned meetings with unnamed, distinguished persons in Dubai.
The Criminal Court which has earlier ordered the de facto Pheu Thai boss to not travel abroad without prior consent ruled that Thaksin’s alleged diseases can be effectively cured by qualified doctors in Thailand, thus rendering it unnecessary for the criminal suspect on bail to leave the country, albeit on a temporary basis.
The de facto Pheu Thai boss is scheduled to appear before court on Aug. 19 as part of the court proceedings on a lese majeste lawsuit earlier filed against him.
The previously fugitive prime minister who had spent 17 years in self-exile abroad had allegedly involved the monarchy in the 2006 coup which ousted him from power during an interview with a news agency in Seoul in 2015.
The billionaire, powerful Thaksin has not only been released on parole from a one-year sentence due to a few counts of convicted misconduct perpetrated during his former premiership nearly a couple of decades ago but concurrently released on bail for the lese majeste case.
Nevertheless, Thaksin had never spent a single day behind bars to otherwise serve his royal pardon-curtailed sentence at Bangkok Remand Prison but had been instead granted contentious double-standard privileges of staying for a six-month period at Police Hospital under the pretext of mystery-shrouded “illnesses.”
Shortly following his release on parole last February, the de facto Pheu Thai boss received guests at his Chan Song Lah residence including former Cambodian prime minister Hun Sen and Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin, paid private visits to Chiang Mai, Phuket and elsewhere in the provinces and played golf with prominent figures in Khao Yai area as if he had not been so seriously ill as publicly claimed.
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De facto Pheu Thai boss Thaksin Shinawatra. Top photo: Naewna, Front Page photo: Thai Rath
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