Military court approves bail for 15 ‘secret society’ suspects

The court approved the temporary release after their lawyer deposited Bt100,000 as a guarantee for each suspect.

The 15 suspects will be released from the Bangkok Remand Prison later in the evening.

The court banned them from leaving the kingdom as a condition for their release.

Thanadej Puangpoon, a lawyer from the United Lawyers for Rights and Liberty, arranged for their release by gathering assets to post as their guarantee. The assets included a million-bath-worth land rights document and cash that were gathered from the United’s funding and detainees’ relatives.

Thanadej initially planned to post bail on Friday but the detainees were put in custody in late afternoon, leaving him insufficient time to prepare surety on the day.

Prior to posting bail at Bangkok Military Court, Thanadej went to visit the detainees in Bangkok Remand Prison, where he also met some visiting relatives. “They’re hoping for the judges’ mercy,” he said “One detainee lived with his eight-year-old daughter in Chiang Rai. Now there’s no one to take care of her.”

Thanadej was referring to 71-year-old Chinnaworn Thipnual, who, like most of detainees, were found to be red-shirt leaders in their provinces.

Seventeen were arrested on August 13 only a day after the string of bomb and fire in Prachuap Khiri Khan and other six southern provinces. Two of them were released before the military court issued arrest warrant for all of them. Fifteen are now being detained. 

The fifteen aging suspects had been reportedly suspected for plotting the bombs. Although the police later found them irrelevant with the bombings, the suspect instead face charges of allegedly breaking the junta’s order and joining secret society.

An intelligence source also told The Nation that the suspects were deemed potential to stir up political situations advantaged by the authority’s shaken status following the bombs.

But the lawyer stressed that the detainees, nine of whom are elderly people, had no capability to plot for any political riots. “Some of them simply met for coffee meeting,” he said. “Some may possess war weapons but because he was an antique seller. He had planned to report his possession to the police but was caught beforehand.”

He cited that some United Nations agencies were also “rather interested” in the case as they did not comply with legitimacy of such allegations