Thailand’s Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered the country’s most powerful and polarising statesman Thaksin Shinawatra to be jailed for one year, ruling he improperly served a 2023 prison term in hospital.

Thaksin, 76, had been sentenced to eight years for corruption and abuse of power after returning to the country in August 2023 following years spent living in exile.

But he never spent a night in a cell — whisked to a private hospital room, his sentence was reduced to one year by royal pardon, before he was freed in an early release scheme for elderly prisoners.

“Sending him to hospital was not legal, the defendant knows his sickness was not an urgent matter, and staying in hospital cannot count as a prison term,” said the ruling read out by a judge.

The court ordered the issue of a war

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