Bangkok, Thailand – A court is poised to decide whether Thailand’s most consequential and controversial political figure of the past 25 years, Thaksin Shinawatra, insulted the country’s revered monarchy, a crime that can land a culprit in jail for up to 15 years.
The charge, under Thailand’s strict “lese-majeste” royal defamation law, stems from an interview the 76-year-old business tycoon and former prime minister gave to a South Korean newspaper in 2015 regarding a military coup that toppled his sister and then-Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra in 2014.
