The Bangkok South Criminal Court on Friday sentenced four men to life imprisonment, commuted from death, for their deadly attack on an anti-Yingluck Shinawatra government protest which killed three people, two of them children, in Bangkok in February last year.
Taweechai Wichakham, 40, Soonthorn Phiphuannok, 50, Somsri Marit, 41, and Chatchawal Prabbamrung, 46, were convicted and sentenced for firing a 40mm grenade that exploded in front of the Big C store on Ratchadamri Road, close to a protest site of the People's Democratic Reform Committee (PDRC), on the evening of Feb 23, 2014.
The grenade explosion killed three people -- a 59-year-old woman and two siblings aged six and five -- and injured 21 other people.
The four men were arrested in July 2014. Public prosecutors arraigned them on charges of premeditated murder, attempted murder and illegal use of explosives, and other criminal offences.
The Bangkok South Criminal Court convicted and sentenced them to death, commuted to life imprisonnment for their confessions during police interrogation. Three other suspects remain at large.
Taweechai was identified as the person who actually fired the grenade with an M79 launcher. The four men travelled on three pickup trucks and their target was PDRC protesters at the nearby Ratchaprasong intersection.
Taweechai fired the grenade at the protest gathering from a pickup on a flyover above the adjacent Pratunam intersection. Because the vehicle was moving the grenade instead landed in front of the department store, where it exploded, the court was told.
The court also ordered the four men to pay 534,700 baht in compensation to the injured.
They had been in detention during the legal process and trial and they did not seek release on bail on Friday.