Former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra is set to leave a Bangkok prison on May 11 after a Justice Ministry panel granted him parole, the Corrections Department said. The department said the decision means Thaksin will be released from Klong Prem Central Prison next month, as he completes the legally required minimum of two-thirds of his one-year sentence.
The Corrections Department said the May 11 release comes as Thaksin, 76, completes that mandatory prison-time requirement. It also said the parole decision was made by a panel within the Justice Ministry, which reviewed eligible prisoners’ cases and approved Thaksin’s release.
In Thaksin’s case, the department said the panel considered his behavior in prison and assessed a low risk that he would repeat his offense, along with his age. After he is released, the Corrections Department said he will serve four months on probation, during which he must reside at his declared home in Bangkok and report regularly to probation officials.
The planned release would mark an end, for now, to another phase of a long-running legal saga that began after Thaksin returned to Thailand in 2023 following more than a decade of self-imposed exile. The Corrections Department said Thaksin was sentenced that year to eight years in prison for abuse of power.
The department said Thaksin’s original prison sentence was later commuted to one year by King Maha Vajiralongkorn, but he was still ordered into a prison cell in September. It said the Supreme Court ruled that a previous six-month stay in a police hospital did not count toward time served, finding his medical conditions were not serious enough to justify avoiding prison facilities and that his hospital stay had violated procedures.
The case followed earlier developments as well. The Corrections Department said Thaksin briefly returned in 2008 to face charges but skipped bail and fled abroad again, describing his later actions as aimed at avoiding lawsuits and criminal charges he claimed were politically motivated.