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Fugitive Thai ex-PM Yingluck in Dubai, aiming for UK
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his file photo taken on August 5, 2016 shows former prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra struggling to hear a question from the media as she arrives at the Constitutional Court in Bangkok on August 5, 2016. Thai ex-prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra missed a verdict in a negligence trial on August 25, 2017 that could have seen her jailed, prompting the Supreme Court to issue an arrest warrant fearing she is a flight risk, a judge said. (Agence France-Presse/Lilian Suwanrumpha)
F
ugitive former Thai premier Yingluck Shinawatra fled to Dubai and may try to seek asylum in the UK, a junta source told AFP Saturday, after she ducked a legal ruling, wrong-footing the court and her supporters alike.
Yingluck, 50, was due on Friday morning to arrive at the Supreme Court for the ruling in her trial for criminal negligence that could have seen her jailed for 10 years.
But she did not show up, staging a vanishing act that wrote a dramatic closing chapter to the 16-year political saga of her mega-rich Shinawatra family.
Speculation swirled on Saturday on the whereabouts of Thailand's first female prime minister -- and her possible escape route.
The junta source, who is well-placed in the security hierarchy, gave a detailed description of her escape, saying she took a private jet from Thailand to Singapore and onto Dubai, the base of Shinawatra family patriarch Thaksin, who is Yingluck's older brother.
"Thaksin has long prepared escape plan for his sister... he would not allow his sister to spend even a single day in prison," the source added, requesting anonymity.
"But Dubai is not Yingluck's final destination," the source said, adding she may be aiming "to claim asylum in Britain".
Thaksin, who once owned Manchester City football club, owns property in London and spends significant amounts of time in the city.
The Shinawatra's political network remained tight-lipped on Saturday in a media blackout that only served to heighten speculation over her dash from Thailand and the likelihood of a possible deal with the junta to allow her to leave.
A senior source inside the family's Pheu Thai party, also requesting anonymity, on Saturday told AFP Yingluck had fled the country for Dubai a few days before the ruling.
The Shinawatra political dynasty emerged in 2001 with a series of groundbreaking welfare schemes that won them votes and the loyalty of the rural poor.
But their popularity rattled Thailand's royalist, army-aligned elite, who battered successive governments linked to the clan with coups, court cases and protests.
Yingluck's government was toppled by a coup in 2014 and she was put on trial over negligence linked to a costly rice subsidy that propped up her rural political base.
