2009-12-13
(Posted by CAAI News Media)
PHNOM PENH, Dec. 13 (Xinhua) -- Former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra arrived here on Sunday afternoon to meet a Thai engineer who was convicted to seven years in jail by a Cambodian court for stealing information and passing it onto his government.
Thaksin will meet with the Thai man, Sivarak Chotipong, at the prison in the southern suburbs of Phnom Penh.
Sivarak Chotipong was arrested last month in Phnom Penh and was charged with a kind of spying work that the Cambodia court considered harmful to public order and national security.
He was convicted on Dec. 8 to seven years in jail by a Cambodian court and a fine of 10 million riels (about 2,500 U.S. dollars).
Sivarak Chotipong, 31, was expected to be released on Monday after Cambodian King Norodom Sihamoni pardoned him on Friday.
The court said Sivarak was collecting information of a flight schedule of his country's former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra's visit to Cambodia on Nov. 10.
During the hearing, Sivarak pleaded not guilty saying he did not copy any document, but only looked through the flight plan and passed it on to a Thai diplomat in Phnom Penh.
Sivarak was employed as an engineer at the Thai-owned Air Traffic Services Company at the Phnom Penh International Airport at which Thakin's special plan landed.
Sivarak's mother has asked Thailand's opposition Pheu Thai Party for help releasing her son.
Some officials from the Pheu Thai Party also came here and will join the event of returning Sivarak to his mother on Monday.
Thaksin was toppled from power in 2006 and he has lived in self-exile in foreign countries since then to avoid a two-year jail term for corruption. Thaksin Shinawatra was officially appointed as adviser of Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen and the Royal Government of Cambodia on Nov. 4 and paid his first visit here on Nov. 10 as the adviser.
Editor: Fang Yang
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