Suthep seeks individual charges against co-leaders

Suthep seeks individual charges against co-leaders

Suthep Thaugsuban (right), leader of the People's Democratic Reform Committee, and Anchalee Paireerak, a co-leader, talk to reporters at the Criminal Court on Monday. (Photo by Tawatchai Kemgumnerd)
Suthep Thaugsuban (right), leader of the People's Democratic Reform Committee, and Anchalee Paireerak, a co-leader, talk to reporters at the Criminal Court on Monday. (Photo by Tawatchai Kemgumnerd)

Suthep Thaugsuban, leader of the People's Democratic Reform Committee, and 22 other co-leaders will petition the Criminal Court for individual charges after prosecutors filed two cases against them.

In one case, Mr Suthep, along with eight co-leaders, were charged in January. In the other, Anchalee Paireerak, Phra Buddha Issara and 12 others were charged in March.

The charges are conspiring to commit an act of treason, supporting an act of treason, collaborating in terrorist acts (Mr Suthep and Chumpol Julasai), obstructing an election and 8-9 other charges under the Penal Code.

Phra Buddha Issara arrives at the Criminal to check evidence on Monday. (Photo by Tawatchai Kemgumnerd)

The offences were allegedly committed during their protests against Yingluck Shinawatra’s government between Nov 23, 2013 and May 1, 2014, which included “Bangkok shutdown” -- forced closures of public offices by the demonstrators -- and blocking people from casting votes. The prosecutors also sought to ban them from politics for five years.

All 23 suspects appeared in court on Monday to check evidence.

In Mr Suthep’s case, the prosecutors sought to reschedule the evidence examination, citing the sheer number of documents and unavailability of some which are locked in other related cases. The court finally agreed to reschedule the evidence examination in this case to June 25.

In Ms Anchalee’s case, Phra Buddha Isara asked the court to petition the Constitution Court whether prosecuting them was constitutional.

“The charter court once ruled our protests were legitimate and peaceful and a Constitutional Court ruling is binding and applies to all cases,” he said.

Like Mr Suthep, Phra Buddha Issara petitioned the court to ask the prosecutors to charge them separately. 

Mr Suthep said he and the other eight co-leaders in his case would take responsibility but was worried about the case against the other 14 co-leaders.

“We’d like to ask to court to have the prosecutors drop the charges against them, carefully reconsider the offences allegedly committed by each of them and charge them individually,” he said.

The court asked them to formally file petitions on the two points.

The remaining 27 PDRC co-leaders have not been charged yet since some of them have asked to delay hearing the charges twice. They are supposed to report on April 19 and the prosecutors are against a third delay.

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