{"id":7315,"date":"2024-08-17T18:15:35","date_gmt":"2024-08-17T12:30:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/?p=7315"},"modified":"2024-08-17T18:15:35","modified_gmt":"2024-08-17T12:30:35","slug":"thai-king-pardons-ex-pm-thaksin-in-birthday-amnesty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/thai-king-pardons-ex-pm-thaksin-in-birthday-amnesty\/","title":{"rendered":"Thai king pardons ex-PM Thaksin in birthday amnesty"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Thailand’s controversial former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra has been granted a royal pardon, his lawyer said Saturday, a day after his daughter became the kingdom’s new premier.<\/p>\n

The 75-year-old billionaire is one of thousands granted amnesty by King Maha Vajiralongkorn in a gesture of clemency to mark his birthday.<\/p>\n

Thaksin was jailed for eight years on graft and abuse of power charges dating back to his time in power when he returned to the kingdom almost a year ago after 15 years of self-exile.<\/p>\n

But his sentence was cut to one year by the king and he was later released on parole because of his age and poor health.<\/p>\n

The amnesty was announced in the official Royal Gazette, and Thaksin’s lawyer Winyat Chatmontree said that the two-time premier benefitted.<\/p>\n

“Thaksin Shinawatra is among those granted the royal pardon,” he said on his personal Facebook account.<\/p>\n

“He will later receive a document from the prison saying he is a free man.”<\/p>\n

The Royal Gazette published on Saturday said that “the king had given opportunities for those to improve themselves and benefit their country”.<\/p>\n

The pardon for prisoners with good conduct came almost a month after King Vajiralongkorn celebrated his 72th birthday in late July.<\/p>\n

The ex-PM was originally set to complete his one-year parole on August 31.<\/p>\n

Lawmakers approved on Friday Thaksin’s daughter Paetongtarn Shinawatra as premier.<\/p>\n

At 37, she is the kingdom’s youngest prime minister and the third Shinawatra to hold the job after her father and aunt Yingluck — both of whom were ousted in military coups.<\/p>\n

Paetongtarn’s elevation to the top job came about after the kingdom’s Constitutional Court sacked previous premier Srettha Thavisin for appointing a cabinet minister with a criminal conviction.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thailand’s controversial former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra has been granted a royal pardon, his lawyer said Saturday, a day after his daughter became the kingdom’s new premier. The 75-year-old billionaire is one of thousands granted amnesty by King Maha Vajiralongkorn in a gesture of clemency to mark his birthday. Thaksin was jailed for eight years […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7316,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7315"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7315"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7315\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7318,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7315\/revisions\/7318"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}