Thai ex-Prime Minister Thaksin, just freed from detention, may still face a royal defamation charge

BANGKOK (AP) — Thai prosecutors said Monday that further investigation is needed to decide whether to bring former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra to trial for defaming the monarchy, just a day after he was freed from a prison sentence on other charges he was serving in a hospital.

Thaksin was released on parole Sunday from the hospital in Bangkok where he spent six months serving time for corruption-related offenses. He had been in self-imposed exile since 2008, but returned to Thailand in August last year to begin serving an eight-year sentence.

On his return, he was moved almost immediately from prison to the hospital on grounds of ill health, and about a week after that King Maha Vajiralongkorn reduced his sentence to a single year. Thaksin was granted parole earlier this month because of his age — he is 74 — and ill health, leaving him free for the remainder of his one-year sentence.

Thaksin was briefly detained Sunday by police from the Technology Crime Suppression Division as he left Bangkok’s Police General Hospital but was allowed temporary release to return home as it was not a working day for the prosecutor’s office, Prayuth Bejraguna, a spokesperson for the Office of the Attorney General, said at a news conference on Monday.

The attorney general’s office had announced earlier this month it had revived an investigation into whether Thaksin almost nine years ago violated the law against defaming the monarch, a crime punishable by up to 15 years in prison.

Thaksin was originally charged in 2016 with violating the law for remarks he made to journalists when he was in Seoul, South Korea, a year before that, but the investigation could proceed only after he was presented with the charge in person in the hospital