Thaksin critic 'attacked' at Bangkok hotel
A government critic claimed yesterday that somebody close to ex-PM Thaksin Shinawatra had assaulted him at a Bangkok hotel on Wednesday afternoon.
Akeyuth Anchanbutr told the press yesterday that he had seen Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra at the Four Seasons Hotel at about 2pm on Wednesday while he was at the hotel’s coffee shop. He then said that a man attacked him less than 10 minutes after Yingluck left.
“The assailant came close to me when I was drinking coffee with a senior. I realised something was wrong so I fought with him. My bodyguards came to the rescue and the assailant ran out of the hotel’s rear gate,”
Akeyuth said. He also recounted the incident on his Facebook page.
He described his alleged assailant as a uniformed officer in plainclothes who was armed. He claimed the man was about to draw a handgun when his bodyguards came to his rescue.
“The assailant knows and is close to former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra. He is known to work for Thaksin,” Akeyuth said, adding that he wanted the assailant to be punished.
However, he said that he would not file a police complaint, but would wait for the government to explain the matter or else he would come up with “daily report” about what happened to him.
“I have no conflict with anyone, except Thaksin,” he said.
Akeyuth, a businessman who runs the Thai Insider political-oriented website, is known to be a staunch critic of Thaksin, Yingluck’s older brother.
The outspoken businessman said he had suffered bruises and cuts.
“It could be because I was in the wrong place at the wrong time and saw something I should not have,” he said.
Yesterday, Yingluck refused to confirm or deny if she was at the hotel at the time Akeyuth was there. When asked about the matter before she boarded her flight to Chiang Mai, the prime minister simply smiled and walked away.
The premier’s bodyguard, Pol Lt-Colonel Wathanyu Withayapalothai, said he was unaware of the incident Akeyuth mentioned.
