Wife of missing activist gets six months jail for encroachment

Phu Khiao Provincial Court yesterday read the Supreme Court’s judgment on the case, which concluded that Suphap Khamlae and her missing husband Den Khamlae had encroached on forestland.
The reading of the verdict had been postponed five times since August last year.
The Supreme Court upheld a Criminal Court judgment that sentenced Den and Suphap to six months in prison, while it dismissed allegations against three other defendants.
Defence lawyer Tanomsak Rawadchai said the verdict was final so his client Suphap would have to be imprisoned, but he added that he would continue to fight to seek a reduction in her punishment.
Tanomsak said the court still considered that Den, who has been missing since April last year, was still alive and a fugitive, despite a man’s skull that many believed to belong to him having been found in March in the forest where he went missing. 
“The court stated that the forensic examination on the disappearance of Den was still too weak to identify that he was dead, so there is an arrest warrant for him,” Tanomsak said.
The Central Institute of Forensic Science released the examination results of the skull showing that it belonged to a man who shared a genetic relation with the mother of Den’s sister, Khamtan Porsricha, but it failed to conclusively identify the missing activist.