Thaksin allowed to travel to Brunei, but not to Vietnam and Cambodia

The Criminal Court on Saturday allowed former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra to travel to Brunei to attend a meeting on February 18-19, but denied his request also to visit Vietnam and Cambodia on the same trip.

The meeting in Brunei is reportedly related to Malaysia’s chairmanship of the ASEAN Summit later this year. According to a news source, the meeting is a follow-up to Thaksin’s earlier visit to Malaysia on February 2-3 at the invitation of Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, who appointed Thaksin as an informal adviser in December.

However, the court denied Thaksin’s request to travel to Vietnam and Cambodia during February 18-19. The court gave a reason that Thaksin’s trips to these two countries are under personal invitations from a businessman in Vietnam and former Cambodia leader Hun Sen, not official invitations by governments of the respective countries.

The court ordered Thaksin to pay a 5-million-baht bond prior to his trip, the same amount he had been ordered to pay before the trip to Malaysia earlier this month. The former prime minister must also report to the court and immigration officers within three days after returning from Brunei.

Thaksin faces criminal charges for violating the lese majeste law arising from an interview with South Korean media in 2015.

The Criminal Court confiscated his passport and mandated that he request permission for any travel abroad as a condition of his bail, which was set at 500,000 baht in June last year.