Fugitive former Thai PM Yingluck gets five years jail in absentia
BANGKOK: Thailand’s Supreme Court convicted and sentenced former prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra in absentia to five years in prison on Wednesday for mismanaging a rice subsidy scheme that cost the country billions of dollars.
Yingluck fled abroad last month fearing that the military government, set up after a coup in 2014, would seek a harsh sentence.
For more than a decade, Thai politics have been dominated by a power struggle between Thailand’s traditional elite, including the army and affluent Bangkok-based upper…