A courtroom in Bangkok on Friday sentenced a Thai man who shot and killed an opposition politician from Cambodia to life in jail. The January taking pictures in Thailand’s capital was extensively seen as a political assassination, however the suspect’s motives had been by no means totally revealed.
Lim Kimya, a former lawmaker from the dissolved Cambodia Nationwide Rescue Occasion, was fatally shot on 7 January in broad daylight close to Bangkok‘s Khaosan Highway, a neighbourhood fashionable with backpacking vacationers.
The gunman, who fled the scene and made his method throughout the border to Cambodia, was recognized as Ekkalak Pheanoi. He was arrested and deported from Cambodia, and later confessed, in keeping with authorities.
Ekkalak advised authorities that he was employed to hold out the taking pictures, however the trial by no means established final accountability for the killing.
The Bangkok Prison Courtroom formally sentenced Ekkalak to loss of life for the killing however his sentence was instantly decreased to life imprisonment as a result of he had confessed and cooperated with the authorities.
Human rights activists noticed the killing as one in a sequence of extrajudicial killings and compelled disappearances carried out in recent times in Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam towards dissidents in exile.
Earlier than the killing, Lim Kimya’s Fb web page had carried messages essential of Cambodia’s authorities.
Safety digital camera footage from the crime scene confirmed the gunman arriving on a bike. Three gunshots are heard earlier than the person walks away because the sufferer collapses to the bottom. The suspect, whose face was not coated, then rode away on the bike.
Within the months that adopted, Thai police additionally issued an arrest warrant for 2 Cambodian males, one suspected of hiring Ekkalak and the opposite suspected of serving to establish Lim Kimya to the shooter. Each suspects are believed to have fled to Cambodia and stay at giant.
Ekkalak was convicted of all fees, together with premeditated homicide and fees associated to carrying and utilizing weapons. He was additionally ordered by the courtroom to pay the sufferer’s household in whole of 1.7 million baht ($55,100) in compensation.
Lawyer Nadthasiri Bergman, who represents Lim Kimya’s spouse, stated her consumer might file an attraction demanding the next quantity of compensation.
She demanded police push tougher to deliver the 2 different suspects to justice.
Cambodia beneath former Prime Minister Hun Sen, who held energy for nearly 4 a long time, was extensively criticized for human rights abuses, together with the suppression of freedom of speech and persecution of political opponents. Hun Sen was succeeded in August 2023 by his U.S.-educated son, Hun Manet, however there have been few indicators of political liberalization.
Additionally on Friday, the courtroom acquitted one other Thai man who was tried in the identical case, Chakrit Buakhli. He was accused of serving to Ekkalak by driving him to the border with Cambodia after the taking pictures, however the courtroom dominated he was merely a employed driver and never linked to the killing.
